


Ask Me, I Won't Say No

by vegansheilseitan



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: (off screen in the past), Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Bisexuality, Communication, Discussion of Unsafe Sex, Drug Use, Eliot Waugh's Canonically Huge Dick, Feelings, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, I got them to talk and they would not shut up, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Porn with Feelings, Single Parent Quentin Coldwater, Unsafe Sex, and then shockingly, in this house we say fuck canon, just assume all standard sex acts are occurring tbh, no beta we die like men, past Quentin Coldwater/Arielle, pub trivia, pure self indulgent fluff, v mild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-15 16:40:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19299643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vegansheilseitan/pseuds/vegansheilseitan
Summary: Wednesday Night Trivia Rule 1: The person in charge of choosing the team name will rotate on a weekly basis in alphabetical order. That week’s decider can only be overruled by a unanimous vote from the rest of the team (per the March 2018 addendum).He lets the group chat know he’s there, checks them in with the Quizmaster asTo Be Perfectly Queer,(because he’s at least self-aware at this point in his life) and heads to the bar.And immediately runs into Eliot.Thankfully not literally this time.Or: the one where no one has magic and Quentin and Eliot are just normal thirty-somethings who play on opposing Pub Trivia teams and they get to fall in love like real people dammitQueliot Week Day 4 – Free Day





	1. How Could I?

**Author's Note:**

> So this.... was supposed to be a short little one shot where our favs are Mortal Trivia Enemies and have some ~funny dramatic hatesex~ and then 50 pages later it is something completely different and I have written nothing for Queliot week, so I guess this counts for Day 4: Free Day??  
> It was so long I'm having to split it into parts so the second and (probably) final bit will be up later this week.  
> Title and chapter titles are from Ask by the Smiths.  
> This is pure, self-indulgent fluff, enjoy.

 “Are you _actually_ the stupidest person alive?” Quentin is honestly surprised it’s taken Penny this long to start a fight with him.

“Penny can you just fucking trust me for once in your life?”

“Maybe if you were right at least once in your life-”

Julia, thankfully, interrupts the argument, “Both of you are idiots and if you don’t _get it together_ in the next minute they are going to murder all of us _again,_ ” she sighs, “I’m really sorry Q.”

The _betrayal_ , “Jules, no. Don’t you dare, not you too.”

“I’m sorry Q, but we’re running out of time. ‘It’s Raining Men’ was definitely an 80s song.” Penny looks smug as Kady writes the answer on the last blank of the _Round 2: Bops of the 70s, 80s, and 90s_ page of their scoresheet despite the fact that Quentin is _absolutely sure_ it was a classic 70s one hit wonder.

“This is bullshit.” he mutters into his beer, but doesn’t try and fight it.

“We’re overruled, Q, I’m sorry.” Alice’s hand pats him gently on the shoulder. A few years ago, just that would have opened them up to a world of awkwardness, but now he takes the small token of comfort without a second thought as Julia runs their answers to the Quizmaster’s podium just in time.

Their team-wide squabble continues as the round’s answers flash on the bar’s TV screens, but it’s mostly for sport at this point. They’ve been at this as a team long enough that they have a system for just about everything-

_Wednesday Night Trivia Rule 3: Any disagreements about responses are settled via majority rule. The losing side must buy the next round as penance._

-so as soon as the answer to question 6 pops on screen, Quentin treks to the bar without complaint, steadfastly avoiding Penny’s smug look.

* * *

Eliot sees him as he approaches the bar. The cute one with the floppy hair from their _sworn enemies_ (who, this week, were known as _Les Quizerables_ —much better than last week’s _Agatha Quiztie_ but not so impressive as his own team’s _To Infinity and Beyoncé_ ) that had caught Eliot’s attention lately _._ Under any other circumstances, he wouldn’t hesitate to turn his charms on the man. Doubtless, Eliot could’ve seduced him months ago, but he’s hesitant to justify shacking up with their only real competition for undisputed trivia champions.

And _god_ Eliot knows how lame that would sound to his 20-something self. Five years ago he wouldn’t have been caught dead at a _pub trivia night_ , let alone be seen so publicly invested in its outcome as to prioritize it over _sex_ , but being _real_ adults had slowly killed his and Margo’s weekday social life. Nowadays, his evening excitement mostly consists of going home, exhausted, to an empty apartment and staring blankly at the television while he considers whether getting a dog would be more work than it’s worth and wondering why he ever quit smoking. Dragging himself off the couch at 6:45pm every Wednesday is almost more energy than he can muster, but somehow he manages it with a religious regularity for the promise of enough alcohol and social interaction to get him through to the weekend.

So, instead of sidling down the bar to seduce the man, he orders another merlot for Margo and a ginger mule for himself and makes his way back to their table, chagrined to see _Les Quizerables_ tied with them, but at least vindicated that ‘It’s Raining Men’ _was_ in fact an 80s bop like he’d been trying to tell his team. He was unsurprised that _Todd_ didn’t know anything, but usually he could count on Josh or Fen to have _some_ sense to trust his knowledge on the pop culture questions.

* * *

Quentin is relieved when they come in first. They haven’t had a single victory in the last month, the longest continuous stretch they’d ever spent on a losing streak (or, as “losing” as second and third place could be) and their rivals across the bar were getting annoyingly cocky. He’s pretty sure if the final round’s theme hadn’t been _Star Trek and Star Wars_ they wouldn’t have won, but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

None of them linger too long in their booth after they collect the gift certificate that will almost cover their drinks for next week-

_Wednesday Night Trivia Rule 2: Only Penny and Alice are allowed to handle the gift certificates because they are the only ones who won’t lose them._

-exchanging hugs and kisses on cheeks. He’s walking out of the bar while texting —a grave mistake he should have learned from by now, but he just has to let the sitter know he’s going to be late _real quick_ — when he suddenly _smacks_ into something solid, sending his phone clattering to the floor.

Something solid which _oh,_ _fuck_ happens to be a person.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” the stranger says, despite the fact that Quentin should clearly be taking the blame here.

He’s ducking to pick up his hopefully-not-shattered phone before he can even spare a glance at the person, “You’re fine, I wasn’t paying attention to-” he loses the sentence as he stands back up, looking up to a face he’s only seen from across the room “-you?” 

* * *

His brief interaction with the enemy-

_”I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Eliot. Waugh.”_

_“Um, yeah, I’ve seen you here before, hi. Quentin Coldwater.”_

_“Quentin Coldwater?”_

-sticks in Quentin’s mind for the next week. He’s excited for trivia. More excited than the usual eagerness for his night out of the house with grown-ups, and nervous for the first time since he could remember. Which is _so dumb_ and shows Quentin how painfully out of practice he is at interacting with other human beings.

He and the guy — _Eliot_ — had barely exchanged two sentences and he’s pretty sure one of them had just been Eliot making fun of his name. But then again, his type has always been the ones that pulled his pigtails on the playground —which, yeah _super healthy there Quentin, way to go_ — except for Arielle.

And there it was: the surefire way to kill whatever ill-advised excitement he’d been holding onto for the night.

He’s early this week, for reasons he’s already overthinking, so he goes ahead and grabs their usual table. It’s his week to pick-

_Wednesday Night Trivia Rule 1: The person in charge of choosing the team name will rotate on a weekly basis in alphabetical order. That week’s decider can only be overruled by a unanimous vote from the rest of the team (per the March 2018 addendum)._

-so he lets the group chat know he’s there, checks them in with the Quizmaster as _To Be Perfectly Queer_ , (because he’s at least self-aware at this point in his life) and heads to the bar, trying to focus on whether or not he wants to try the new local craft brew they were pushing this month-

And immediately runs into Eliot.

Thankfully not _literally_ this time.

“Well, hello, Quentin.” Eliot looks as surprised to run into him as Q is, which is stupid on both their parts.

“Uh, Eliot. Hello. How are you?” _just talk like a normal human, Quentin, Jesus._

Eliot smiles, sultry and so over the top that Quentin almost laughs, “Fraternizing with the enemy, are we? I’m sworn to hold our knowledge in secrecy, so don’t you dare try to seduce it out of me.”

Quentin does laugh at that, somehow put at ease by Eliot’s carefree flirtation, “I’ll try to restrain my charms. Scout’s honor.”

The bartender sets Eliot’s drink down, but he makes no move to leave with it. When she turns to Quentin, he realizes he’s completely forgotten to decide what he wants, “I’ll have whatever he’s having.”

She turns away to mix the drink and Eliot still hasn’t moved, “So it seems we both have some time to kill before the battle starts,” Eliot takes a sip of whatever it is Quentin just ordered, “tell me about yourself. Our little run in last week made me realize we’ve been playing each other for ages and yet I know nothing about you.”

Eliot’s gaze is casual but intense, like he has no idea how to dial back his energy. Quentin is a little bit mesmerized by it, “Um, I’m an English professor. Originally from Jersey but I’ve been in New York since undergrad. You?”

Quentin pulls, thankful, away from Eliot’s gaze to pay the bartender and take a sip of his mystery drink, which tasted of mint and peach and bourbon.

“It’s called a bourbon peach smash.” Eliot answers the question Quentin didn’t ask and takes a sip of his own in turn, “I’d been meaning to try it since they added it to the menu.”

Seeming to remember that there was a question Quentin _had_ asked him, he continued, “I work in an office, doing the absolute most _boring_ work you could imagine, completely banal, but the money’s good and the benefits are excellent, so it hasn’t driven me away yet.”

That surprised Quentin. Eliot seemed far too magnanimous to lead such a boring life, “Sounds about as fun as spending every other week grading a hundred papers written by eighteen year olds.”

“The joys of adulthood keep on building now don’t they?” Eliot’s smile this time stretches to his eyes, more genuine than the flirty one Quentin had seen up until now.

Quentin liked it a lot.

It looked like Eliot was about to say something else when something behind Q seemed to catch his gaze, “Alas, it seems our… fraternization must come to an end, Professor. My partner in crime has arrived.” Quentin followed his gaze to a beautiful woman entering the bar. He recognized her in the same way he recognized all the trivia regulars.

“It was… nice talking to you, Eliot.” He gave the man a parting smile, “I’m sorry we’ll have to crush you again this week.”

The other man barked out a laugh, “Mmm, I _implore_ you to try, Coldwater,” and then he was heading to his usual seat, drink in hand.

* * *

“Round 4, Question 2: _Ba! Ba! Black Sheep_ was the working title of what famous 1936 novel?” the Quizmaster asked. The word _novel_ immediately draws Eliot’s eyes across the room to Quentin, who doesn’t look the least bit like a professor in his all black button down and jeans.

“What are books from the 30s?” Margo asks, tapping the pen insistently against the page.

“ _The Grapes of Wrath_ , _Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby_ …. No wait that was the 20s.” Josh was always _terrible_ with dates.

“It’s _Gone with the Wind,_ Bambi.” Eliot answered, tearing his eyes away from the oblivious man across the pub.

“Are you sure?” Todd should know better than this by now.

“It’s an iconic piece of gay cinematic culture, of _course_ I’m sure.” _and I read the lit professor’s lips just now._

“But the question is about the book-”

“Which I’ve _read_ ,” well, _skimmed_ , “-so unless anyone else has any suggestions-”

“It’s our best guess for now, and Eliot seems very confident, Todd.” Fen says, ever the peacekeeper of the group.

Eliot wishes he could have gotten a little bit more out of Quentin than _professor from New Jersey_. Something like his favorite color, his phone number, maybe his thoughts on doggy style.

He’s not sure how long he’s been zoned out when Margo says, “El, honey, can you stop eye-fucking our arch rivals and contribute here?”

Eliot shifts his gaze to his platonic soulmate, “He’s _cute_ , and besides, me staring at his mouth got us _Gone with the Wind_ , imagine what me staring at his ass might accomplish.” Margo snorts in a manner that is less than dignified, so Eliot assumes he is forgiven.

* * *

“So he insulted your name and then hit on you at the bar and now you’ve got the world’s biggest crush?” Julia recaps for him over the phone too-early Thursday morning.

“At least I’m on brand?” he tries, pacing around the kitchen, mug in hand.

“That’s fair. So what’s the issue? I trust you not to aid the enemy on trivia nights even if you’re sleeping with him, I’m sure the rest of the gang would too.” Quentin glances at the clock on the stove, trying to decide if there’s time to get into this while he finishes his coffee.

“I just… haven’t been on a date since-” he redirects that sentence, “in years. And I haven’t been with a guy period since _grad school_ and I don’t even know if I would have time to date. Or if this guy would even want anything serious.” Julia always knows how to coax the never ending string of over analysis out of him.

“So worst case scenario: you go ask him out and he says yes and it goes nowhere. Or it could go somewhere, Q, you never know. And either way we go back to kicking their asses at trivia.”

This is what he always hated about dating. All the options, all the possibilities. It was too many details for his brain to pick apart.

“Jules I just… what happens if I really like him and then I’m- it’s all too much for him?” he makes his way down the hall, voice lowered and opens the farthest door. He can’t help but smile at the little wriggling lump under the covers, pausing in the doorway just for a moment before he has to wake him up.

“I mean, Teddy is the most important thing in my life right now. _Always._ And I don’t know how to tell someone that. Or how to handle it if that’s a dealbreaker. And I can’t… I don’t want him to get attached to someone if they’re not going to stick around.”

That, above all else is what terrifies him. And it’s not something Julia has an answer for.

* * *

They go for coffee. It’s Quentin who asks him the following Wednesday, which surprises Eliot. He would’ve guessed another two weeks of careful flirty banter before the little nerd got up the confidence, but he’s not mad at it at all.

There’s just the small issue in that it’s been _way too long_ since he went out on a date that was, well, actually a date. Even then, it’s been weeks since he so much as _opened_ Grindr, let alone used it to meet someone. He spends an hour tearing apart his closet and another 20 minutes going back and forth over whether he wants to shave or lean into the stubble, and then his _hair_ refuses to cooperate once he gets out of the shower.

It’s an unmitigated _disaster_.

As soon as they’re together, though, he forgets to be nervous. There’s a strange air something between them. Something that sets Eliot at ease with Quentin’s presence.

“So how did you get into pub trivia?” Eliot asks when the sit down with their drinks. He goes to sip his chai, but stops when he catches a complicated look on Quentin’s face that tells him he’s fucked up right out of the gate, “Sorry, am I touching on something I shouldn’t be?”

Quentin thinks for a second, sipping his cappuccino, “No, it’s just a little bit of a heavy subject for a first date, but I’m fine with sharing if you want to know.”

Eliot meets his gaze, “I for one am a fan of parading out the heavy stuff up front. Surprises are so passé after 25,” this seems to have the intended effect of setting Quentin at ease, “though do be aware, axe murders are still a dealbreaker for me,” he could get used to the way Quentin’s eyes crinkle when he laughs.

“I promise I’ve only ever committed murder via machete.”

Eliot overacts a big sigh of relief, “Oh well _that’s_ perfectly fine.”

Quentin sips his drink one more time and Eliot gives him a moment to collect his thoughts, “My best friend Julia and I have done trivia at least occasionally since we could legally drink —big nerds, you know? — but um… but it kind of became a regular thing after-” he swallows, he always hates this part, but he can get through it now without the ache tearing a hole in his chest at least, “-after my wife died two years ago. I think my friends just wanted an excuse to get me out of the house regularly.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot says, reaching for Quentin’s hand without thinking. Usually Quentin hates the _sorrys_ more than anything, but this one doesn’t feel so inadequate as they usually do.

“Thank you.” Quentin brushes his thumb over the hand on his.

“Will you tell me about her? If you don’t mind.” Eliot asks, hoping it’s the right choice.

Quentin laughs, but it’s only half-full, “Are you sure?” Eliot nods and takes a sip of his drink, but his attention doesn’t waver.

So Quentin does. He tells him about Arielle. Her kindness, her dry, dirty humor, her heart so big he thought he’d drown in it after how ugly things with Alice had ended —and _that_ was baggage to unpack some other time.

“Everyone said we were too young to get married, but knowing what I know now? I’m so glad we did.” the next part is harder than this one for some reason. Probably because it’s _Teddy_.

He’s almost four now, but Quentin still thinks of him as the tiny, pink squalling thing he held skin to skin that first day that shifted his whole universe. He thinks a part of him always will, no matter how old Teddy gets. He’ll always feel the need to protect him.

There have been a lot of people over the years that Quentin would die for. It’s not a high bar for him in the first place. But Teddy? Quentin knew immediately he would _live_ for Teddy.

Having a kid didn’t _cure his depression,_ Quentin had never expected it to. But holding him in his arms that day was like he’d been adrift in a vast dark sea and suddenly he was anchored. He’d promised himself, promised the little barely-six-pound bundle, that he would do whatever it took to live to the ripe old age of 95 and see the man his son would be.

“And, um, there’s something else I should tell you, in the interest of full disclosure. And I know what a big deal this is so don’t feel, like, _bad_ if it’s a deal-breaker-” he’s stalling and he knows it, “but we had- I have a kid. Teddy. He’s three.” Eliot, to his credit, seems to take it well. He swallows, obviously choosing his words wisely, “I- I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t expecting that. I- do you have any pictures?”

Eliot’s immediate instinct is to _run_ , but it’s a knee-jerk reaction cultivated from a decade of forcibly not-caring and he’s —he’s just _too old_ for that shit. Too alone in his big, empty apartment.

So Eliot spends most of his first date in god-knows-how-long looking at pictures of a toddler with big eyes and soft brown hair —the spitting image of the man in front of him.

He hasn’t ever dated anyone with a kid before. He has no idea how he feels about it, especially since the kid is basically _a baby_ which is so much easier for Eliot to fuck up. He’s always thought about kids in a distant way, the way you can only think about things that have nothing to do with you.

When _he_ was a kid, late at night he would imagine himself living in a big city with a handsome, sophisticated, well-muscled mystery-man with Jake Gyllenhaal’s face who would love Eliot with his whole heart and kiss him over the cheese platter when they threw dinner parties in their lavish, superbly-decorated apartment. It was a daydream but it helped him survive. _Kids though,_ they were so extremely far out of what he’d been told he could hope for, even in a fantasy it never even seemed like a possibility. Something he didn’t let himself want because he wasn’t able or allowed to have it in the first place.

And then he was older and the world was a different place and people like him could do things like get married even in _bumblefuck Indiana_ —if they wanted to risk it, because things might be different, but not _that_ different— and something like having children seemed less impossible. But he’d come to the conclusion by then that he wouldn’t be a good father anyway and set aside whatever lingering wants remained.

Wanting something doesn’t mean you deserve it.

When he was a kid though, he’d never really considered the possibility that the handsome, sophisticated, floppy-haired mystery man might just come with a kid included.

So it becomes a kind of routine for them. Drinks on Wednesday before trivia and coffee on Saturdays or Sundays while Teddy spends time with Quentin’s dad. Twice a week, he and Quentin sit at the bar and in the coffee shop for hours.

The days in between are filled with little texts about how _Karen from HR said the saltiest thing today_ and snapchats of Teddy _insisting_ his shoes stay on the wrong feet despite Quentin’s best efforts. Quentin tells him about Teddy (and there’s something dangerously endearing about seeing how much love this man is capable of) but also about his students, his parents, his friends from trivia. Sometimes he talks about Arielle, how he stopped wearing his wedding ring last year and the absence still feels weird sometimes. How her parents might move, not to the city but maybe at least upstate, to be closer to Teddy.

Eliot, in turn, shares more about his past than he had with most people ever. He talks about his dad; the funeral he’d skipped for a two-week bender in Miami Beach with Margo as a _fuck you_. The amends letter he got from his oldest brother a last year, that strained and distant relationship they were both trying to rebuild. He even talks about _Mike_ , eventually, who he hasn’t spoken about outside of therapy in at least five years. About the car accident. The guilt he’ll always carry.

It never feels like a date when they’re together, much less like they’re _dating_. To Eliot, it’s like catching up with a friend he hasn’t seen in years, like someone he’s known his whole life and just fell out of touch with.

Eliot kisses him for the first time on their second coffee date. Right in the middle of Quentin saying something about his students not understanding the narrative difference between a cliché and a literary archetype in their analysis papers. It’s soft and warm and Quentin blushes just a little and Eliot had meant to let Quentin make that move. Meant to wait for it in case the other man wasn’t ready. But Q doesn’t seem to mind by the way he leans across their table right after and kisses him a second time.

One Saturday, shortly into their coffee date, Quentin slips into the conversation that Teddy is spending the weekend in New Jersey with his grandpa. It’s a casual remark, but Eliot understands the weight behind it. He knows —he’s inferred— that Quentin hasn’t been with anyone since his wife. So Eliot promises himself he’ll be careful with this man, body and heart, and invites him back to his place.

It doesn’t go at all how Eliot is expecting. They end up on Eliot’s couch at 2 in the afternoon smoking a joint that Eliot had forgotten he even _had_ , which definitely makes him feel like a bad influence despite Quentin’s insistence, “I get so little _grown up time_ , El, it might as well be worth it.”

They kiss, stoned and lazy because neither of them have any kind of tolerance anymore, on the too-small couch for what feels like hours. He gets lost in how _responsive_ Quentin is, how easily the man’s body asks for what it wants before his brain has even caught up.

Quentin had forgotten what it was like to kiss… well anyone really, but especially a man. The stubble against his mouth burns in a way that sends chills down his spine and hands bigger than his own press under his shirt. It’s… different enough. Nice. Exactly what he’d wanted.

Well, not _exactly_.

“Can I see your bedroom?” he asks, voice low, knowing how he looks with his hair mussed and lips swollen.

“Yes,” Eliot breathes, kissing him again before he pulls them both up off the couch, hand in Quentin’s and proceeds to kiss him all the way to the bedroom.

Somehow, they end up against a wall, despite the bed’s proximity, with Eliot pressing his weight against Quentin and working a hand into the man’s pants. Q gasps at the contact, so hard it breaks the kiss, his hips bucking into Eliot’s fist, “I want,” he pants, “I want you naked, El.”

Eliot has no arguments, reluctantly pulling his hand away to get Quentin’s t-shirt over his head before starting on the far-too-many buttons of his own. They make it to the bed, eventually, once they’re both properly naked. Quentin’s eyes tear him apart, raking hungrily over his skin, the _want_ coming off the man in waves, “Can I blow you?” he asks.

“Is that a question?” Eliot chuckles in response, kissing him again.

Quentin huffs a laugh against his mouth, “It’s been a while since I’ve done this. Like... a long while. Just, be warned.”

And then he takes Eliot into his mouth and it’s _glorious_. Eliot, who has been gifted more blowjobs in his life than he could attempt to count, is a firm subscriber to the belief that there is rarely such a thing as bad head, and while Quentin is certainly out of practice, Eliot can tell he does actually know what he’s doing, “It’s just like-” he groans as Q moves his tongue _just so_ around the shaft, “-riding a bike.”

If Quentin’s mouth weren’t otherwise occupied, he’d go for the easy joke of _that’s not really what I want to be riding_ but he lets it go in favor of letting Eliot’s wet cock fuck into his mouth, guiding the other man’s hips to gently thrust as he hollows his cheeks. He can’t go very deep, even if he was in practice with this kind of thing that would be a struggle with Eliot’s size (a surprise Quentin hadn’t even thought about until they got each other naked and then- _um, wow, Waugh_ ) so he leaves one hand around the base.

By the time Eliot pulls him off and comes, thrusting desperately into Quentin’s hand —and then very quickly grabbing a hand towel from the laundry hamper for him, so polite— his own dick is so hard he’s surprised he didn’t just come thrusting against the bed while Eliot fucked his mouth. It’s been so long since he had an orgasm _period_ and blowing Eliot had _really_ done it for him, apparently.

“You don’t have to-” he tries to tell Eliot as the man pulls him down onto the sheets and climbs on top of him, working his mouth down Quentin’s chest to return the favor, “You can just jerk me off if you want, I’m gonna come in like three seconds anyway.”

“Good,” Eliot said, licking up his cock.

“Oh, fuck, -okay,” he tangles one hand in curly black hair and lets his eyes fall shut as wet heat closes around his shaft. Contrary to his prediction, he does last longer than three seconds, which his pride is thankful for, but still, it’s not long before he comes down Eliot’s throat. The orgasm hits him so hard his vision whites out and his balls ache with it.

When he regains some of his mental faculties, Eliot has tangled them together and is pressing soft kisses against his jaw.

“You good?” he murmurs it against Quentin’s skin.

“ _So_ good, fuck. Thank you.” he angles his head to meet Eliot’s lips.

Instead of laughing at him, Eliot just says, “And thank _you_ ,” kissing up to his temple and petting his hair.

They lay there for a while, talking about nothing, fingertips running over bare skin, trading occasional kisses. Eventually, words form on Eliot’s tongue he’d been thinking about for a few days now. Shifting his eyes down, he finally says, “I’d like to meet Teddy soon. If- if that’s okay?”

Quentin looks surprised, but doesn’t reject the idea outright, pulling Eliot’s hand up to his lips. In between kisses he says, “I guess that depends.”

“Hmm? On?” he runs the fingers of his free hand through Quentin’s hair, brushing loose strands back into place as much as he can.

“On if you plan on sticking around for a while.” he tries too hard to sound casual about it, puppy eyes searching for Eliot’s.

“Well, I suppose trivia would be _very_ awkward if I wasn’t planning on it...”

Quentin tries to laugh and kiss him at the same time, it goes only a small bit better than expected.

* * *

 

Later, Eliot’s trying to decide if it’s worth it to change the linens even though they’ll probably have sex again later when his stomach growls. They both seem to realize at once that it’s been hours since the light lunch they had from the coffee shop cafe.

“Let me cook dinner for you?” he asks, mentally running through what he might be able to throw together with what he has on hand, “It won’t quite be up to the standards I usually hold when I cook for pretty boys, that requires a bit more planning and a few hours with a marinade, but I guarantee it will definitely be edible.”

Quentin hums thoughtfully, “That’s definitely something I’m going to take you up on eventually, because you would be alarmed at the percentage of my diet that consists of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets-” Eliot gasps appropriately in mock horror, “-and I do really miss eating actual honest to god, home cooked, grown-up food, _but_ ,” he punctuates the word with a kiss to Eliot’s collarbone, “what if, _instead,_ ” _kiss,_ “we finish that joint,” _kiss,_ “order Thai food,” _kiss_ “and make out in the shower while we wait for the delivery?”

He pretends to consider the counteroffer for a second, stroking his chin dramatically, “I accept these terms, Mr. Coldwater.”

Quentin was half kidding about making out in the shower, but Eliot takes it _very_ seriously, pulling him towards the bathroom as soon as he orders the Postmates, “We have 17 minutes and I intend to make the most of it.”

The shower is probably too small for two fully grown men to _actually_ shower, but personal space wasn’t really the intention to begin with, so Quentin chalks it up to a win and decides to ‘help’ Eliot get clean. Shamelessly feeling up his pecs under the guise of thoroughly working soap through chest hair. Once he’s satisfied, Quentin’s hands skate down across Eliot’s stomach, one coming to wrap Eliot’s dick.

“I thought the plan was to keep this shower PG, hmm?” Eliot’s words are belied when Quentin feels hands working their way across his skin.

 Despite the way Eliot is hardening against his fingers, Quentin’s hand slides away from the man’s cock, “Of course. My apologies, I’ll behave,” even as he says it, he can’t resist sliding a hand back to play with Eliot’s balls, the other creeping around to the small of Eliot’s back and down to cup at his ass.

Eliot groans, opting to copy Q’s idea. Both of his hands come to knead Quentin’s ass and he pulls them together, chest to chest, hardening cocks not quite sliding together because of their heights. The tease of it is good anyway, he thinks, pressing himself more firmly against Quentin’s abdomen, letting himself be pulled down into a kiss. He knows they don’t have a lot of time, and his hands are quite enjoying where they are, but he can’t resist asking, “Can I wash your hair?”

Quentin laughs, “You can do whatever you want to my hair,” _and to the rest of me_.

So Eliot turns him around —purely to get at his head from a better angle, of course— and generously works shampoo into Q’s hair, scratching gently against his scalp. Quentin leans back into the touch and Eliot can’t resist pressing his erection harder against his lower back.

“Before I ask this, I’d like to firmly register my moral opposition to shower sex, but I feel as though it’s a... soon to be relevant query-” he interrupts himself to prod Quentin under the spray, “-now rinse so you have time to condition,”

“Were we not just having shower sex?” Quentin quips.

Eliot takes a moment to watch the other man, naked and wet, dick half hard and biceps flexing as he works the shampoo out of his hair, “We were having shower _foreplay_ , darling, there’s a difference. Now don’t interrupt,”

Q raises his hands in defense, stepping back towards Eliot and turning around as he rings the extra water from his hair, “So what’s your question?”

Eliot presses himself against the other man’s back once again as he pumps the conditioner into his hands and begins to work it through the ends of Quentin’s hair, finger-combing it as he goes, “Top or bottom?”

If Quentin is surprised at the question, he doesn’t show it with his body, though his voice is unsteady, “Is, um, is there a correct answer?”

Eliot knows he’s deflecting, but he humors him anyway, “I won’t say I don’t have a preference for topping,” he admits, fingers massaging gently into the man’s scalp, “but I am very versatile, so either way I promise you won’t be disappointing me.”

He can’t see Quentin’s face at this angle —his head is tilted forward so that Eliot can work through the hair at the nape of his neck— but he’s expecting, assuming, Quentin’s answer will be more or less identical to his own. He’s gathered that Quentin’s experience with other men is limited to a boyfriend or two and a couple dalliances, all back in college.

“I guess you could say I’m versatile in theory-” and Eliot expects him to continue _but I don’t like to bottom_. Which is fine, he _was_ being honest before, topping is a preference for him, but not a necessity —he went through a phase his senior year of undergrad where he bottomed almost exclusively for like six months and it was _fantastic_ — he likes sex, whatever form that comes in. And above that, he likes _Quentin_. Likes him enough that it’s really not a problem if their bedroom preferences don’t match up perfectly.

“-but I pretty much always bottom if I get to pick.”

Eliot’s fingers freeze in Quentin’s hair. He’s surprised, but more than that, he’s _disappointed in himself_ for being surprised. For subconsciously putting Q into a box labeled _Not Gay Enough to Take a Dick_ without even realizing it. Because he _knows_ that Quentin is thoroughly queer, has no reason not to believe him —even without remembering the enthusiastic way Quentin had sucked him off earlier.

And beyond that, he knows from experience that sexual preference has nothing to do with what a person enjoys in bed. He’s slept with more than a few gold-star gays who adamantly disliked bottoming for one reason or another. He’s known even completely straight people who enjoy a little bit of prostate stimulation. He _knows better_. And he hates his subconscious for buying into reductive bullshit anyway.

Before he can take his foot out of his mouth and respond, he hears his phone ring from the bathroom counter, “Shit, that’ll be the food. Do you mind finishing up your hair on your own?”

“I don’t know how I’ll manage.” Quentin teases.

He presses a kiss to the shorter man’s temple before stepping out of the shower.

* * *

 

They eat Thai food in their underwear on Eliot’s couch while they pass the last of the weed back and forth.

He wants to continue their conversation from before, but he also doesn’t want to ruin the evening. Quentin beats him to it before he can make a decision, “Did I surprise you? With my answer to your shower question?”

Eliot takes his time to thoroughly chew his spring roll, stalling, before he responds, “Kind of, yeah. Which is absurd and low-key biphobic of me, I’m sorry.”

Quentin, who seems less upset and more resigned, kind of makes an ‘it happens’ gesture and says, “I’ve been too gay for every woman I’ve ever dated and too straight for every man, so I guess I’m kind of used to it at this point.”

And if that doesn’t absolutely break Eliot’s heart to hear, “You’re not too straight for me, Quentin. I promise you, I am old and wise enough to trust a man’s queerness once my dick has been in his mouth.” he succeeds in getting Q to crack a smile, “More than that, though, I _trust_ you.” he reaches out a hand to hold Quentin’s.

“Thanks, El.” he smiles softly, “Now pass the joint before we have to re-light it.”

* * *

 

They end up on the floor at some point ( _“It’s more comfortable than your couch.” “I bought it for the_ aesthetic, _Quentin, not for your ass.”_ ) and Eliot’s thoughts drift back to earlier, “So when I meet your son,” and it’s weird how saying that _isn’t weird_ at this point, “what are you going to introduce me as?”

“Well he’s pretty good with names at this point. I thought ‘Eliot’ would be appropriate.” Quentin turns so that their eyes meet, and their faces are so close that their noses almost touch like this.

Eliot leans closer, so their breath mingles and their lips are just barely separated, “‘Daddy’s special friend Eliot’ has a nice ring to it.” he smiles.

“I kind of like ‘daddy’s boyfriend Eliot’ a little bit more?” _brave little Q_.

Eliot kisses him, finally, hot and slick, “That was almost _smooth_ of you, Q.”

Quentin smiles against his lips, “Smooth enough to get me into your pants again?” and the next thing he knows, Eliot is manhandling him into the bedroom and onto the bed.

“What do you want?” he asks, teeth against Quentin’s throat once they’re naked and hard with both their cocks in Quentin’s hand.

And really Quentin’s answer to that is _everything_ , _always,_ but that’s not really an _answer_ so he settles for, “Whatever you want, surprise me.”

And Quentin is definitely surprised when Eliot flips him over onto his stomach. Surprised and very turned on, not to mention a touch shaken by how quickly he’s picked up on what being pushed around a little does to Quentin. He feels Eliot straddle his thighs, cock resting hard on the cleft of his ass; he drapes his body over Quentin’s to press kisses against the knobs of his spine and up his neck to just below his ear.

“Tell me, Q, are you comfortable with rimming?” between the tenor of Eliot’s voice and the offer itself, Quentin shudders, hips grinding into the sheets.

“ _Yeah_.” his voice leads Eliot to suspect he’s more than just comfortable with it.

Eliot has never been good at apologizing, or at not fucking things up in the first place. But he knows he’s good at sex, good at pleasing his partner. He figures if he can rim Quentin until he cries, that’s probably a good start on making up for earlier.

He kisses his way back down his spine, all the way down until he has to spread Quentin open to kiss further. So he does. He kisses, a gentle, teasing barely-there kiss against his hole. Wets one finger in his mouth and circles Q’s rim with it, watching him tense and relax, his other hand reaching between Quentin’s legs to gently cup his balls.

He kisses along the swell of one cheek, traces the barest touch of his tongue round the area, far enough from where Quentin wants it to see him clench in anticipation. And then he goes for it, working his tongue all over the outside of his hole, down against his perineum. Q moans, already desperate for more and _fuck_ Eliot loves this, rimming someone who really enjoys it. He spreads Q open further and works his tongue inside, slowly taking him apart until he begs for more, “El please, fuck, I need _something_ in me.”

It goes straight to his dick, of course, but it also makes something in Eliot twinge with shame that he’d doubted this before. Quentin _wants_ this. It’s obvious how much he loves having his ass played with, how desperately he needs to be filled by whatever Eliot is willing to give him.

He ignores Quentin’s request for now, though, kneading the flesh of his ass and doubling down to press his tongue farther and farther inside until he hears the chant of, “ _Please-please-please Eliot fuck-please-”_ that Quentin is praying into the mattress, his hips pushing back against Eliot’s mouth, eager for _more_. Eliot presses this thumb _right_ between Q’s balls and the place his tongue is buried, massaging with just enough pressure until Quentin lets out a sound that almost isn’t human and _fuck_ if that’s what he sounds like before Eliot even gets a finger in him, Eliot can’t wait to hear the noises Q makes on his dick.

Finally, he pulls his mouth away, tracing his thumb up and down Quentin’s cleft, “If I make you come like this, will you be able to get hard again when I fuck you?”

“ _Jesus fucking shit_ , El, you’re going to kill me.” Quentin’s head is turned to the side, hair in his face and gasping for air.

“Consider this my formal apology for assuming you’d only want to top,” he keeps massaging the perineum in steady little circles, “You didn’t answer my question.”

Quentin huffs out a laugh that sounds a little bit desperate, “Don’t make our first time fucking into makeup sex, I don’t think that bodes well for the rest of our relationship.”

“You’re far too coherent, should I eat you out some more?” _that,_ and the teasing press of Eliot’s thumb against his hole, gets a whine low in the back of Quentin’s throat.

“Please don’t. I _will_ come if you do and as hot as you fucking me afterwards sounds, I’m gonna be way too sensitive this time.” he trusts Quentin’s judgement of his own body, but his brain does get a little stuck on-

“This time?” he inquires, pressing kisses against the base of Quentin’s skull, right below the hairline.

“Try again when you didn’t already make me come once.”

Eliot hums, letting that thought distract him as he shifts, pressing his cock between pale, firm cheeks and thrusting gently, letting the head of his cock just brush against Quentin’s hole. Quentin gasps at that, shivering as the momentum of Eliot’s thrusts also push _his_ dick into the mattress, “I didn’t think you’d be this much of a tease.”

Eliot takes offense at that, “Calling me a tease implies that I’m not going to follow through.” he leans forward over past Quentin to the nightstand drawer, “And I definitely will.”

He conspicuously drops a magnum about four inches from Quentin’s face, which is _almost_ enough to distract him from the sound of Eliot flicking open the lube, _finally_.

The thumb returns, slick now, gently probing at his hole to see whether or not he’s still wet and loose from Eliot’s mouth. Seemingly satisfied with what he finds, Eliot starts to properly work him open with those long, thick fingers. And _fuck_ Quentin loves this. Loves just being slowly opened and filled up. He revels in it, enjoying the stretch and burn.

Just when he’s about to tell Eliot he’s ready, he feels the fingers inside of him curl with laser precision and all of the air leaves his lungs in a groan. Everything goes from zero to sixty as Eliot slowly massages his prostate, fully aware of the effect it’s having and not letting up for a second, “Feel good, baby?”

“Uuhnggh” is about all Quentin can reply, fingers clenching in the sheets, straining to stay still as he tries to keep the friction on his cock to a minimum. It _does_ feel good, it feels amazing. Eliot’s fingers know exactly what they’re doing. It’s the right angle, the right pressure, everything to keep Quentin just on the edge of too much.

Eliot will flagrantly deny that he’s a tease, but he does truly love foreplay. Almost more than sex, it’s intoxicating, making someone fall apart with his hands and his mouth. He’s immensely turned on by how responsive Quentin is like this, how easy it is to make him feel good. His free hand comes down to stroke his own cock, just to take the edge off until he gets enough of exploring what sounds he can draw out of Quentin just by playing with his hole.

Because, _the sounds_ that man is making. He’s pretty sure Q doesn’t even realize he’s letting out these low, broken little groans with every touch to his prostate. One of these days, Eliot thinks, he _has_ to make Quentin come like this.

That though falls out of his mouth before he realizes he’s talking, “I could get you off like this so easily, Q, couldn’t I? Just let you grind your dick into the sheets while I milk your prostate? Fuck, baby I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t you?”

Today is not that day though, despite the way those words make Quentin sob into the sheets. Finally, he pulls his fingers out —and god, the conflicted sound Quentin makes at that, like he wants to be fucked so bad, but doesn’t want Eliot to stop fingering him for long enough to make it happen.

He reaches for the condom. There’s too much lube on his hand to open it as fluidly as he would like, though, and the moment of struggle apparently gives Quentin enough time to regain words.

“Can I ride you?”

Eliot’s dick twitches at that, which does _not_ aid in the condom application, but he thinks the price is fair, “How could I ever say no to that?”

His voice completely betrays the collected facade he’s trying to hold, but Quentin is far too focused on maneuvering him into sitting up against the headboard to notice. Eliot revels in the opportunity to relax and let this beautiful man work himself onto his cock.

Quentin drips a little extra lube over the condom and then suddenly, Eliot has a lapful of him, kissing him desperately and trying to line them up at the same time. Until _finally_ he feels the head of his cock push Quentin open and he has to break the kiss to let out a moan. Quentin is tight and hot around the tip of him, sinking down slowly with a patient greed.

Once Eliot is _finally_ fully inside of him, Quentin lets out a shuddering breath, “ _Fuck,_ El,” the desperation of it makes Eliot’s hips twitch, grinding up into the man above him.

And then Quentin starts to move, slowly rising and falling. Eliot watches him, mesmerized by the small furrow of his brow, the tiny, shaky breaths he lets out. He’s forcing himself to take it slow, trying not to bite off more than he can chew all at once.

He brings a hand to jerk Quentin lazily, giving him something to ease the stretch, “Good?”

He’s trying to make sure Quentin is _okay_ , but the other man just nods, eyes fluttering closed, “ _So good, El_.”

His other hand comes to rest on Quentin’s hip, guiding his movements, thrusting in time with him. Gradually, they move faster, Quentin bracing his hands behind Eliot on the headboard for better leverage. Eliot slides his hand from Quentin’s hip down to his hole, sliding over the rim to feel where his cock is stretching it open.

Quentin lets out a whine, head falling back, sinking down harder and shifting ever so slightly around. Eliot can tell when he finds the right angle by the broken groan that breaks out of him. It’s enthralling, seeing how much Quentin’s enjoying this. His thighs are twitching, breath sharp and wild. Eliot could watch it forever. He looks completely blissed out in Eliot’s lap, like his mind has disconnected from his body entirely, leaving an empty desperate vessel behind to seek his release.

Eliot feels used, in a good way. Like he exists just to please the man in his lap and feeling the _tight-hot_ stretch of him is just a perk. He’s more than okay with it, Q can use his cock any time if it feels like this.

He pulls Quentin down into a kiss, desperate and messy. It distracts him enough that he stops, seated with Eliot completely inside him, and switches to rocking his hips in shallow, eager little circles, hands tangling in black curls.

They stay like that for ages, kissing sloppily while Quentin grinds on his cock, trying to keep him as deep as possible in this position. Eliot holds out until he’s desperate for more friction.

Without breaking the kiss, he moves one hand to tangle in Quentin’s hair and one to his hip. Shifting his weight, he presses forward, maneuvering Quentin onto his back. It’s all very smooth until he realizes their legs are now crowded up against the headboard and they both dissolve into giggles. Eliot sighs, kissing across Quentin’s face while the man laughs, “Fuck and the manhandling itself went so well.”

“So smooth, ten out of ten.”

“Shush and shift down.”

“What a Don Juan,” Eliot tries to quiet him with a kiss as they shuffle towards the footboard without him pulling out.

Once they have sufficient legroom, he pushes Quentin’s legs against his chest, grinding his cock deeper than it could get before, “You’re a brat.”

Quentin’s mouth parts again as Eliot bottoms out, but he still manages to quip, “You knew that when you decided to fuck me.”

Eliot figures the best way to win the argument is to make Quentin forget about it. He pulls almost all the way out, so that the fat head of his cock is just barely spearing Quentin open, and says, “Jerk yourself off.”

Quentin does as he’s told, wrapping one hand around his cock and stroking himself languidly. Eliot matches his pace to Quentin’s hand, fucking him slow and steady. He can savor the feeling of him around every inch of his cock like this. Watch himself sink in and memorize the image of Quentin stretched tight around him, taking it so well, “Fuck, you were just born to take a cock, weren’t you, baby?”

Quentin whines, broken in the back of his throat, hand speeding up. Eliot doesn’t follow him this time, keeping the same steady pace even when Quentin’s hips start moving more insistently against him to try and pick up speed. Part of him wants to just give Quentin what he’s asking for, give him anything he wants. It’s a lot of self-restraint on Eliot’s part not to just rail him hard and fast and dirty until they both fall over the edge.

Instead he holds down Quentin’s hips and focuses on how good he feels around him, tight and yielding. He wants to draw this out, make it good because Q deserves it.

“Definitely a tease,” Quentin complains, breathy, once he realizes he won’t be getting his way.

Eliot gives him a taste of what he wants, one good hard thrust all the way in, savoring the surprised little moan it earns him, “It's hardly teasing when I’m _inside of you_ , Q,”

“Please, El,” the demanding tone is gone now, and he can tell Quentin is on the edge of begging. His eyes meet Eliot’s, pupils wide and lashes heavy. If it was difficult to resist before, it’s an enormous act of willpower this time for Eliot to stop himself from folding the man in half and absolutely fucking _wrecking_ him. He settles on a compromise, maneuvering Quentin’s hips just so-

Quentin _moans_ at the slide of Eliot’s cock against his prostate, mouth parted in surprise and desperation. It’s addictive, Eliot wants to make him make that sound over and over again until his neighbors complain. He fucks him just like that, watching his eyes close, seeing how he gasps around those eager little groans like he can’t get enough.

Quentin’s hands grab for purchase anywhere they can on Eliot, letting go of his own cock like he’s just that desperate for more skin, more contact. And _fuck_ , Eliot realizes he’s closer than he should be, can feel his balls tightening. Determined to make Quentin come first, he finally gives in and starts fucking him just like he’s been asking for. Hard and fast and, once he’s sure Quentin can take it —which Eliot judges by the frankly post-verbal sounds he makes— harder still.

He loses the perfect angle he’d been working, can tell he’s only hitting Quentin’s prostate every few thrusts now, but he’s too close to refocus, mind lost in the slick squeeze of Quentin around him, getting tighter every minute. He’s so close, barely holding himself off the edge now, but he wants Quentin to come more than he wants it for himself. Wants to feel the even-tighter squeeze of muscles around him, hear him sob out his orgasm on Eliot’s cock.

Quentin’s dick is hard and leaking between them, begging for contact. _He’s so fucking beautiful_ , Eliot thinks, reaching between them to jerk him off. But as soon as his hand closes around Quentin’s cock, he’s spilling between them with a broken moan. All of a sudden, he’s so tight around Eliot, so blissed out and desperate as he paints their stomachs. Eliot comes immediately, shaken and surprised by how fast it happens, pushing as deep as he can, hips bucking in little abortive thrusts as he empties his balls into the condom before it even hits him what’s happening.

He’s shuddering, aftershocks rolling through him, limbs too weak to push himself off of Quentin and pull out. Every movement one of them makes sends a shock of sensation through him. He’s not sure when they started kissing —he thinks maybe Quentin pulled him to it when he came but maybe it was right after— but their mouths keep moving against each other, open and loose while they both shake.

He can feel himself softening and he _knows_ he needs to pull out and take care of the condom before it becomes difficult. So he props himself up on one arm and carefully withdraws. Quentin makes a small, oversensitive noise as he pulls away. He soothes it with another kiss before walking the offending piece of latex to the wastebasket on shaky legs and trudging to the ensuite for a washcloth. Once they’re both cleaned up, he pulls Quentin close, pressing kisses to his forehead. His chest feels tight, full with something his mind hasn’t caught up with yet.

As he stares at Eliot’s profile, still-weak limbs tangled together, Quentin thinks this might be the most relaxed he’s been in years. It’s definitely the first time he’s come twice in one day in… longer than he can remember even.

For the first time that evening, surprisingly, he thinks of Arielle.

When he’d asked his dad to take Teddy for the weekend —resolutely ignoring the knowing tone Ted gave him over the phone— he’d expected to feel like he was cheating on her in some way, but the guilt didn’t come. And now, laying naked and well-fucked in the arms of someone else, he still doesn’t feel the weight of betrayal he’d anticipated. Instead he feels weirdly at peace for the first time since the funeral.

He thinks she would have liked Eliot, his flirty charm and dark humor. He thinks she would want him to have this, to be happy again. More than anyone he’d known, she had always understood what a finite and precious thing happiness was to him.

“You okay?” Eliot asks softly, hand coming to run through his hair. He gets the impression that Eliot knows where his thoughts drifted and feels bad for a second, that he’s letting grief touch a moment that should be theirs.

“Yeah, yeah I’m. Actually good,” he meets Eliot’s eyes with soft honesty, but his voice is breaking and he’s not sure why, “Really good.”

He pulls Eliot down to him, needs him desperately all of a sudden.

Eliot kisses him like he might break, pulling him even closer still, hand cupping his jaw so gently.

“It’s okay,” Eliot murmurs against his lips. He wonders why until he realizes his face is wet.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know why-“ he hadn’t even realized he’d started to cry.

“Don’t apologize,” Eliot traces a thumb across his cheek, brushing a tear away, “It’s a lot, it’s okay.”

He lets Eliot hold him, let’s himself cry it out against his chest. Let’s himself have this. Feels soft kisses against the top of his head. His first priority, his only priority really, has been Teddy for so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to take time for anything else. Quentin loves being a father, it’s one of the only things he feels like he’s actually good at. He loves his son more than anything in the world, would give anything for him in a heartbeat without a question, but it’s been so long since he felt like a _person_ and not just a parent.

After a while, he looks up at Eliot again, “Um, thanks. Thank you. I think I needed that… _all_ of that, even more than I thought,” he says, breaking the soft silence around them.

Eliot hums in response, running his fingers up and down Quentin’s back, “I get it,” it soothes the small voice telling Quentin he’d been too needy, too much too soon.

* * *

Quentin wakes up with cottonmouth and without an alarm for the first time since Teddy started sleeping through the night. For a moment, he forgets where he is, what day of the week it is, and only just manages to register his surroundings and catch himself before he rushes out of bed in a panic.

Eliot, sprawled on his stomach with limbs thrown across both the bed and Quentin, must register the disturbance. The arm around him tightens and Eliot begins nuzzling blindly at whatever body part happens to be closest —in this case, Quentin’s shoulder. Clearly still half asleep, he mumbles something pretty garbled into the shoulder. Quentin, as the father of a toddler, is familiar with translating nonsense noises into English. He thinks it’s something like, “Teddy’s with your dad, baby. Go back to sleep.”

He tries, managing to doze fitfully for a while before he gives up in favor of watching the man next to him.

There were things about romance that Quentin had missed. Getting to know someone. Holding them. Being held. Sex, obviously. Kissing, probably more than sex. Waking up next to someone had been one he’d forgotten to miss.

He lets his thoughts drift, petting Eliot’s dark curls softly. The more time they spend together, the more he realizes how starved he’s been. For touch, for intimacy. He had missed affection more than sex even (though he had _desperately_ needed that too).

He was surprised at how easily Eliot had taken his needy weirdness and emotional baggage in stride. He could probably have anyone he wanted and for some reason he was choosing to stay around a nerdy, touch-starved, widower-dad who cries after _really good_ sex and ruins the mood.

“Stop thinking so loud, it’s too early,” Eliot was awake enough now that his speech was understandable.

“It’s like 10:30,” Quentin laughs quietly, pressing kisses to Eliot’s forehead.

Eliot shushes him, “On _Sunday_. The lord’s day. The day of _rest_ , Quentin.”

“You’re not religious.”

Eliot lifts his head up this time to make very serious eye contact, “No, but I do believe in lazy Sundays.”

Quentin rolls his eyes and goes in for a kiss that he _intends_ to be a quick press of lips, but they end up spending several minutes trading chaste little pecks until both their lips hurt from stubble.

“What time do you have to pick up Teddy?” Eliot continues to press kisses across every patch of skin within lazy reach of his lips.

“Around one. He and dad watch cartoons together all morning and eat all the sugary cereal I won’t let him have at home,” thinking about it makes him smile.

“Hmmm so grandpa spoils him, then?” Eliot smiles. It knocks Quentin off kilter for a moment, how incredibly lucky he is in this moment.

“Unbelievably,” he confirms.

Eliot hums thoughtfully against his collarbone, “Well since we have time and you wouldn’t let me cook you dinner last night, can I make you brunch before you head out?”

* * *

Quentin pulls into his dad’s driveway at a time his boyfriend would probably call _fashionably late_ thanks to a post-brunch adventure that had severely bent Eliot’s No Shower Sex rule. His dad gives him an all-too-knowing look, but doesn’t mention anything until Teddy is suitably distracted packing up the toys he’d brought with him (or trying to pack them as much as a three-year-old can anyway).

“So how was your romantic weekend, Curly Q?” his voice is teasing and it makes Quentin feel like he’s 18 again, coming home one weekend his first semester in college and telling his dad about his first-ever girlfriend. That tone used to embarrass the hell out of him, but he understands it a lot more now that he’s a parent. He may be in his 30s, but he’ll always be his dad’s kid.

That did not make him _any_ more open to talking with his dad about his weekend of weed and gay sex than he had been at 18 during his _second_ semester in college.

“Um it was. Good? Fine. Eliot is… fine?” he clears his throat, sipping his tea with more focus than any beverage demands. Ted gives him a moment, long used to Quentin’s rambling.

“He wants to meet Teddy soon. I think we’re all having dinner sometime this week.”

“They haven’t met yet?” Ted seems surprised.

Q hadn’t realized just how much he’d been leaving his dad out of the loop, “Yeah I… I wanted to make sure-” he takes a breath, “I didn’t want Teddy to like him and then lose him if it didn’t turn out to be serious.”

A sadness creeps into Ted’s eyes and Quentin knows they’re both thinking of her. “So it is, then? Serious?”

Quentin thinks about how Eliot took care of him. Knew what he needed even when he didn’t know himself. _It’s a lot, it’s okay._

“Yeah we’re um,” he clears his throat again. _Boyfriends_ sounds too… youthful to say to his dad with a straight face, but they’re not quite at _partners_ yet, “We’re official now?” he finally settles on.

Ted smiles, huge and genuine, happy for him the way he’d been when Quentin told him he was going to ask Arielle to marry him. Quentin thinks, unbidden, of what Eliot’s told him about his own father.

“That’s great, Q,” he looks like he wants to say more but he’s interrupted by a different Ted torpedoing into Quentin’s legs.

“Daddy, daddy, look!” Teddy says, pulling excitedly at the fabric of his jeans.

“What is it, buddy?” he cranes his head down to see Teddy pointing at his tiny tennis shoes which are, for the first time in weeks, velcroed onto the correct feet. They’re somewhat haphazard due to Teddy’s tiny, clumsy fingers, the tongues slightly mushed down into the shoe and the velcro straps not-quite straight, but they’re on the right feet and not a tripping hazard. It’s such a little thing, but his chest fills with pride the same way it does for basically everything Teddy does.

“Wow, you did such a good job!” the excitement in his voice only exaggerated a little, he pats Teddy’s hair, which is a little too long and falls in his eyes. He won’t let Quentin cut it and that’s not a battle he’s going to fight when he’s steadfastly refused to cut his _own_ hair to a socially acceptable length since the disaster of a cut he’d gotten in grad school.

Ted scoops the kid up to say their goodbyes and Quentin prays that Teddy’s mood won’t turn at the prospect of leaving.

Something slightly-crazy occurs to him and he pulls out his phone to text Eliot while he still has two free hands. _Question: would it be too much for you if we had dinner with my dad and Teddy at the same time?_

He wasn’t expecting an instant response, but he got one before Teddy’s feet were back on the ground. _Of course not, parents adore me_

“So, Dad, um, how would you like to meet him?”

* * *

 

They have dinner Tuesday because Quentin doesn’t have anything after his 9am lecture, which was supposed to give him time to get everything ready. But his dad had insisted they all come to his house (Quentin suspects this is so he can pull out the _photo albums)_ so there’s nothing for Quentin to prepare and the free hours just leave him with time to overthink.

He thinks he might be more nervous than Eliot by the time the other man gets to his apartment —he is unaware of the series of mild meltdowns Eliot may have had the night before trying to figure out what outfit would impress both an almost-four-year-old and an almost-sixty-year-old— but he’s happy to see him nonetheless when he opens the door.

“Hey,” he can’t help but smile at the other man, kissing him hello in the doorway, “we’re almost ready to head out, Teddy just has to finish putting his shoes on. Come in.”

He realizes belatedly that Eliot’s never seen his apartment before and walks him through a quick tour while they have a minute. The place is small but it’s more than enough space for just the two of them. Eliot is struck by how comfortable it is. His own apartment is lavishly decorated, everything in it expensive and unnecessary and composed precisely to advertise the person he’s made himself into, but there’s an emptiness to it, a layer of superficiality. It feels too-quiet and lifeless when he walks into it. This feels like a home.

A home that was _very obviously_ decorated by Quentin, judging by the rooster motif in the kitchen, but he won’t hold that against the man. (He resists the urge to make a joke about cocks, nervously aware of the little ears wandering here somewhere.)

“This is my bedroom,” he follows Q into the first room in the hallway. Most of the space is taken up by a very comfy looking bed that gives Eliot ideas he should not be having about a man whose child _and_ father he’ll be meeting shortly, but he gives Quentin a pointed look anyways.

“Stop that, Waugh,” his tone is soft though, and his cheeks are pink.

“I said nothing, Coldwater.” but his smirk gives him away.

Quentin comes up on his tippy toes, hands splayed on Eliot’s chest for balance, and kisses him softly before looking into his eyes, “You ready? I can only stall for so long.”

Eliot laughs, “I appreciate the effort, but yes, I am.”

“He’s in his room.” Quentin leads him back into the hallway, down past the bathroom to the last door which is slightly ajar. Eliot can hear small shuffling noises from inside and his heart starts to hammer harder in his chest, “I wish I could say at least he doesn’t bite, but I actually have no guarantees on that one.”

With that, Quentin pushes the door open.

Eliot doesn’t register much about the room. There are walls, which he thinks might be yellow, and a window with sheer white curtains and one of those rugs with a city design on it, cartoonish roads curving playfully for toy cars to race down. On the rug is a small child he would recognize even without the pictures, painstakingly connecting the strips of velcro on his shoes, his tiny brow furrowed in concentration.

“Teddy?” Quentin motions for Eliot to stay in the doorway while he approaches the kid, squatting down to his level, “Remember how I told you Eliot was coming to Grandpa’s with us? I’d like you to meet him if that’s okay?” he waits for Teddy’s affirmation before picking him up.

Eliot’s chest tightens. He was expecting the nervousness, but he wasn’t expecting the way seeing Quentin with his son would make him feel. An ache like he’d been missing something. Quentin carries the child over to him with a practiced ease.

“This is Daddy’s boyfriend, Eliot. Can you say ‘hi’?” Q’s eyes are on Teddy, but Teddy is laser focused on Eliot and it is absolutely cheating that he looks so much like his father.

“Hi, El-ee-it” Teddy waves excitedly, very carefully pronouncing each syllable of his name in a way that makes him suspect Quentin helped him practice.

Eliot swallows dryly and waves back, “Hello, Teddy.”

* * *

 

Teddy chatters to him excitedly the whole car ride, telling Eliot what he _thinks_ is a summary of what grandpa’s house is like. He tries his best to respond with appropriate ‘oohs’ and follow-up questions, shamelessly vying for the three-year-old’s approval. Eliot’s glad he had begrudgingly let Quentin drive, because he’s not sure he’d be able to split his focus between Teddy and the road. He hadn’t been expecting Teddy to even be comfortable around him, let alone try to converse. He’s grateful for the distraction though, because he only remembers to be nervous when they pull into the driveway (their arrival confirmed by an excited squeal of, “We’re here!” from the back seat which, rather adorably sounds more like “we he-yah”).

Quentin must notice his jitters because before they release Teddy from his car seat, he takes Eliot’s hand and kisses his knuckles, “Breathe, you’re doing great. You’ve already got Teddy’s approval-” which Eliot still can’t quite wrap his head around, “-and my dad is much easier to win over.”

“Thank you,” Eliot smiles, wanting to kiss him, but unsure how comfortable Quentin might be with PDA on a suburban street where his father and child might see. He’s about to ask, something he thinks he probably should have done earlier, when they’re interrupted by an exasperated, “Daddyyyyyyyy!”

Ted welcomes them at the door, pulling Quentin —and by extension, Teddy, who Quentin is carrying— into a hug before they even cross the threshold. It’s almost alien to Eliot, whose entire background for fatherly affection was the occasional shoulder pat, which had been doled out to his brothers far more often than to him.

“You must be Eliot, son, Quentin’s told me all about you.” Eliot’s brain gets stuck on _son_ so much that he doesn’t register Ted going in to hug him until it’s happening. He manages to reciprocate, but does shoot Quentin a desperate glance communicating his confusion.

“Come on in, boys.”

* * *

He’s sure dinner is lovely. He even tells Ted so, his charm coming easily once he recovers from the hug, but in reality he’s too nervous to taste a thing. Despite his nerves, the conversation flows well. They chat politely about Eliot’s job, his degrees, Ted’s countdown to retirement, with some anecdotes about Q’s childhood thrown in for variety. It’s very subtle, but He knows he’s being vetted every time Ted directs his attention towards Eliot.

Luckily, parents really are a strong suit of his, even if he’s a touch out of practice. Despite disliking most people, Eliot is, at his core, actually a people person. He could charm his way out of a paper bag, assuming the paper bag could tolerate a little extravagance.

Everything goes remarkably well until Ted asks, “So tell me about your family, Eliot,”

Quentin shoots him an apologetic look and kicks himself for not giving his dad a list of sensitive topics. Seeming to sense the awkwardness, Teddy interjects helpfully with, “Time for ice cream?”

“Dessert comes after dinner, kiddo. You know the rules. But if you finish your carrots, I’ve got some _sprinkles._ ” Ted answers. Teddy looks suitably placated by his grandpa’s offer.

Quentin’s hand has come to rest on Eliot’s knee, squeezing supportively, “Dad-”

“It’s okay, Q,” Eliot sooths, turning his attention back to the older man, “My family was never… supportive.” he explains, sipping his wine, thankful for at least a small amount of alcohol to ease the conversation, “I haven’t spoken to most of them since I turned 18.”

“I’m sorry,” Ted says, both for the question and the answer. His sincerity startles Eliot for a moment, and reminds him so much of Quentin that he accepts it without question.

After a moment too much of silence he says, “Quentin tells me you have some incriminating childhood photos to share with me after dinner?” and the easy flow of the evening is mostly restored.

The three of them all play with Teddy in the living room after dinner, building and destroying an elaborate lego castle, but it’s not long before Teddy gets cranky and Quentin coaxes him into falling asleep on the couch.

Watching it makes that same something from earlier flutter in Eliot’s chest.

“How about those photos now, son?” Eliot’s been caught red-handed making googly eyes. He feels exposed for a moment, vulnerable with this man he barely knows and is really trying to impress, but Ted’s eyes are warm and knowing.

Eliot moves past the moment, turning the charm back on, “Absolutely.”

Quentin finds them conniving a few minutes later in the kitchen.

“Q, I had no idea you had _braces_.” Eliot teases dramatically.

“How are you already to _middle school_?” he joins them at the kitchen table, pulling up a chair next to Eliot and craning his neck into the photo album.

“If he’s seen one picture of Teddy, he’s seen every baby picture of you, Curly Q.”

Eliot mouths _Curly Q?_ at him with far too much glee.

Quentin enjoys the trip down memory lane with far less embarrassment than he honestly expected. It helps that Eliot’s teasing is so fond as to almost be a flirtation. The pictures get sparser as Quentin gets older, tapering off almost completely when he gets to college except for the occasional holiday picture and obligatory graduation photos. Then Eliot turns a page and the next picture hits Quentin like a brick to the face.

It’s his wedding photos.

He’d forgotten they were in this album. He’d almost forgotten they existed at all. The biggest one, the one that hurts the most, is the one of them cutting the cake. He’d made some stupid joke right before, he can see it on his face, the dopey grin. He looks proud and happy and so, so young. Arielle in the photo is laughing a genuine, boisterous laugh, her nose all scrunched up and her smile wide and joyful.

Eliot’s hand covers his on the table, rubbing small circles into the skin, “She was beautiful.”

Quentin meets his eyes, looking for hurt or jealousy or awkwardness, but finding something else that he can’t name, “Yeah, she was.”

* * *

They load Teddy in the car carefully. The summer sun is only just setting, but he’s dead to the world. He sleeps like his mother and Quentin is thankful for it, for both their sakes. He himself has always been a light, fitful sleeper and he’s not sure he could’ve handled it if Teddy was like that too.

As soon as the kid is strapped in, Ted pulls Quentin aside, leaving Eliot by himself in the passenger seat. He watches them talk, a little nervous, but he thinks he managed to charm all the Coldwater men today overall. After a minute or two, Quentin hugs his father tight and jogs back to the car.

“Sorry,” he says, buckling himself in.

“What was that about?” Eliot tries not to let on just how curious he is, feigning a polite interest.

“Well,” Quentin smiles at him, “let’s just say he likes you.”

Eliot smiles, leaning in and kissing him, hard but chaste, had cupping Quentin’s jaw. He’s hoping the twilight offers them some privacy, “Sorry, I’ve been wanting to do that all night.” he strokes a thumb over Quentin’s smiling lips.

“You could have, if you wanted to. My dad is well aware we’re not just, like, _buddies_.”

“‘Buddies?’” Eliot snorts.

Quentin pecks his laughing mouth, “You know. Guys being dudes. No homo.” he can’t even get it out with a straight face, pun very much intended.

They laugh probably too loud considering the sleeping child in the backseat until Quentin’s face gets a touch more serious, like he’s overthinking, “And I don’t want to um- like hide this from Teddy or anything, right? I don’t want him getting the impression there’s anything, like, _wrong_ or inappropriate about us kissing. Or us in general. Kids pick up on that stuff, even if it’s subconscious. So if you want to kiss me, that’s okay. Um, whenever- “

He’s rambling, so Eliot kisses him again to quiet his mind. Quentin leans into him like he’s been wanting it all day too. They don’t intend for it to be, but this time it’s deep and dirty, with Quentin’s tongue slipping into his mouth. Eliot brings a hand to tangle in his hair and it’s all he can do to part them when he really wants to work his mouth down the other man’s neck and _ruin_ him right here in his father’s driveway.

“I think _that_ might have pushed the limits of family friendly PDA.” Eliot’s voice is rougher than he expected.

* * *

It’s not that late when they make it back to the city, for grown-ups at least. Teddy slept the whole way home and only wakes as Quentin is picking him up out of the car. He starts to fuss in Quentin’s arms and Eliot feels like he should be doing something but he’s not sure what.

“Can you grab his bag?” he does, happy to be useful.

“Daddy? Can El-ee-it stay with us?” it’s mumbled in the way that all of his sentences are and his tiny mouth still struggles with the ‘th’ sound. Quentin looks away from big brown puppy eyes towards Eliot to see if he caught the child’s request. The soft, shocked look on the man’s face is answer enough.

He raises an eyebrow towards Eliot, leaving it up to him. He gets a jerky nod of the head in reply, like Eliot can’t find the words to accept for himself. “Sure, buddy.”

They get into the apartment and Eliot follows Quentin down the hall to Teddy’s room, watching softly as he changes the tiny person into equally tiny pajamas. He’s spent basically every moment of his life since puberty telling himself that he didn’t need a family, that he was better by himself. Later, he’d told himself that he would never need anything more than the family he found, the one he built for himself almost by accident in Margo and Fen and even _Todd_. And in a way, that’s true. His found family is more precious to him than any of his blood. He _doesn’t_ need a family in the traditional sense, he’s never been one for traditional anything. But, watching Quentin and Teddy, he realizes he _wants_ one if he can have it. He files _that_ emotion away to process later.

Teddy falls back asleep basically as soon as he and Quentin say goodnight. He’s so precious when he sleeps, Eliot doesn’t know how Quentin does anything but look at the flare of his little nostrils all night every night. Eventually though, they leave him be, closing the door behind them.

“Sorry to keep you so late,” Quentin says sheepishly. It draws a smile from Eliot.

“It’s okay. I’m glad he seems to like me,” he steps forward into Quentin’s personal space.

“He does,” Quentin’s voice is soft, happy, his hands come to rest on Eliot’s waist, “you’ve managed to charm all the Coldwater men tonight.”

“Charm is my specialty. Even on a crowd as tough as this one,” he pulls Quentin closer, so their chests are almost touching, hand resting softly between his neck and jaw.

“Hey,” Quentin says, barely above a whisper.

“Hey,” Eliot replies, leaning down so their noses almost touch.

Quentin kisses him, lips and teeth and tongue, and so many feelings that it’s overwhelming. He can’t get enough of it, feels like he’s trying to climb inside Eliot with his tongue.

“Stay?” Quentin’s voice is small when they part, so much softer than it has any right to be with how he was just kissing Eliot.

It’s late though, and he has to work in the morning. They both do. Neither of them had really planned on him spending the night and he doesn’t have any clothes with him or even a toothbrush.

“Of course,” Eliot says anyway, kissing him again. His hands wander down to cup Quentin’s ass, pulling him firmly against him. They’re only a couple feet from Quentin’s bedroom, but neither of them is willing to part long enough to make any meaningful progress in that direction. Eliot’s aware though, that groping him like this right outside his kid’s bedroom is probably bad practice. He crowds the smaller man up against the wall which is, well, not an improvement on the situation, per se, but it does give Eliot the leverage to hoist him up and start carrying him down the hall.

Quentin groans low in his throat once he catches on, “Fuck, you cannot do something that hot without warning, El, you’re gonna kill me.”

Eliot’s only response is to knead the flesh of his ass where he’s holding Quentin up and suck lightly under his jaw, just light enough not to leave any marks as he moves them into the room, thankful the door is already ajar. Once inside, he crowds Quentin up against it, using their bodyweight to close it as quietly as possible. Quentin’s hand scrambles for the lock as Eliot uses the support to grind their hips together.

“Want you inside me again,” he whispers against Eliot’s mouth, flushed but not even a little embarrassed, especially given the groan Eliot responds with.

“Your wish is my command,” and he’s _finally_ moving them to the bed. He sets Quentin down, regrettably parting them to unbutton his shirt.

Quentin can’t help but stare as Eliot strips, begrudgingly compromising the view to pull his own shirt over his head. Eliot, fully naked now, starts working Quentin’s pants and boxers down his legs at once, kneels beside the bed to get them past the ankles.

Once the offending items are removed, he stays on his knees, kissing slowly up Quentin’s calf, over the inside of his knee and finally, slowly, wraps his lips around Quentin’s cock. He blows him with that same torturous pace, working his tongue over every inch and savoring the deep, breathy noises that he draws out. Tries to put into actions what he can’t find the words for.

He pulls off only long enough to ask, “Lube?” and resumes when Quentin reaches into the nightstand, handing Eliot a half full bottle and then opens the thin cardboard box of condoms, —the same kind Eliot prefers, which means Quentin definitely bought them for him— fingers too shaky to avoid ripping the fresh packaging in the process. He pulls Quentin further forward onto the edge of the bed, balancing the man so precariously he has to brace his hands on the mattress. It would be easier for him to lay back, but watching Eliot suck him is hypnotic. A dry finger teases at his rim, sending a spike of arousal through his body.

Suddenly abandoning the slow pace, Eliot pushes him back against the bed forcefully, draping Quentin’s legs over his shoulders and working his hot tongue over his hole. Quentin has to physically bite back a moan at that, desperately trying to keep himself quiet and wondering what monumental act of karma he’d committed to deserve a boyfriend who loves rimming him as much as Eliot does.

He’s so distracted by Eliot’s tongue licking him open, he doesn’t even register the sound of the lube opening until there are two fingers massaging his rim alongside the tongue.

“Fuck, Q, you’re so hot. I could eat you out for hours,” the fingers press inside him, slowly, both at once and he shudders, bearing down gratefully.

“Someday I will,” he promises, voice rough, “Make you come with just my tongue in your ass, listen to how desperate you get.” Eliot’s fucking him with the fingers now, a promise and a tease for what’s to come.

“Anytime you want,” Quentin manages, staring at the ceiling as he feels Eliot’s skilled tongue work over his sack.

Eliot is mesmerized by how fast Q’s opening up for him, how eagerly he takes whatever Eliot is willing to give him. He works a third finger inside with barely any effort at all, curling them almost immediately against Quentin’s prostate, feeling him tighten in response.

“Please, El,” Quentin pants, craning down to look at him. He’s expecting Eliot to ignore him, knows it’s not quite enough prep for how big Eliot is. Instead of ignoring him, though, Eliot shifts them fully onto the bed. Quentin scrambles to help, grabbing for the condom he pulled out earlier. He reaches down past arm between his legs and the fingers still moving inside him, and wraps his hand around Eliot’s thick cock, shuddering out a breath. He’d never considered himself a size queen, but he can’t deny it’s doing _something_ for him, feeling how heavy the dick in his hand is, knowing the stretch of it inside him.

“Let me put it on you,” he says, regretfully feeling Eliot’s fingers slip out of him with one last tease against his prostate. He shifts up onto his knees, mirroring Eliot. Gives him a few strokes as their mouths meet, feeling how hard he is just from opening Quentin up. He rolls the condom down eagerly before he turns himself around, being over onto his forearms. When he looks over his shoulder to see how Eliot’s doing, the man looks wrecked, eyes wide and lips parted. He brings a hand to caress Quentin’s ass, thumb tracing down the cleft, over his hole. He must realize he didn’t spend quite enough time on the fingering because he grabs for the lube, spreading a generous amount on himself in addition to what was already on the condom.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” he whispers against Quentin’s shoulder. He knows Eliot is being tender, looking out for him, but it makes Quentin’s dick twitch and, yeah, _so much for not being a size queen, Coldwater_. He feels the tip Eliot’s cock, muted by the latex but still hot against his hole.

Eliot presses into him slow and the _stretch_. It _is_ too much. Feels like he’s going to split open.

He absolutely _loves_ it. Has to muffle a moan in the sheets. The whole world narrows to Eliot pressing inside him. He can’t focus on anything but breathing deep and bearing down.

“You okay, baby?” Eliot’s voice is strained and breathy. Quentin responds with an ambiguous noise somewhere between a whine and a grunt that is not at all helpful as an answer.

Eliot tries again, “Do you need me to stop and prep you some more?”

The genuine concern in his voice forces Quentin to find words, “Don’t. Don’t you dare, please.”

Eliot breathes sharply behind him, frozen with just the tip of him inside, “It’s not too much for you?”

Quentin doesn’t really know how to answer that, “It is. Way too much. It’s- good though. Very good. Keep- keep going,”

He feels Eliot exhale shakily against his spine, but he presses forward as slow as he can, inch by inch until his hips are against Quentin’s ass.

He’s never felt this full in his life, doesn’t know what to do with himself except breathe. Neither of them is touching his cock, but he’s so hard even with the blunt edge of pain that echoes where Eliot’s buried in him.

“Can I-?” Eliot chokes on the words, hips grinding instinctually and _god_ he’s so deep, Quentin doesn’t know how it’s physically possible.

“Yes, please. Move.” Quentin’s voice sounds about as wrecked as he feels.

Eliot pulls back an inch or two, making a small, shallow thrust. The sound that breaks out of Quentin’s throat is raw and _loud_ and surprises them both. Eliot cups a hand over his mouth as quickly as he can to muffle the noise, so turned on he’s shaking, “Gotta be quiet, baby.”

The bathroom and linen closet both separate his room from Teddy’s, and the bed isn’t even against that wall, so it’s extremely unlikely they’ll wake him up unless they’re _trying_ , but Eliot doesn’t want to risk scarring the kid.

He leaves the hand over Quentin’s mouth just in case, bracing his other hand on the man’s shoulder and giving another shallow, experimental thrust. The noise is quieter this time, but no less desperate and _fuck_ he’s gonna be the death of Eliot at this rate.

 _It’s a good way to go,_ he thinks thrusting into Quentin properly and _god_ he’s so tight around Elliot, he has no idea how it doesn’t hurt, but Quentin is obviously enjoying himself, moaning broken little noises into Eliot’s hand. So he doesn’t question it. He just loses himself, working up the pace until he’s fucking Quentin good.

Eliot doesn’t even realize he’s talking under his breath at first, a stream of dirty nonsense working its way out of his mouth unbidden, “So good, Quentin, fuck, baby, so tight for me. You love this so much, Q, fuck fuck-”

He doesn’t remember ever feeling this out of control in bed, at least not in _years_. He slows, makes himself breathe evenly. Quentin sobs into his palm, he soothes him gently, stroking his cheek with the thumb of the hand muffling him before pulling it away.

“Bite the pillow if you need to, baby,” Quentin shudders at that and _fuck,_ he’s so far gone. Eliot pushes his chest into the mattress, angling their hips so he can fuck right against where Quentin wants him.

Quentin does sob into the pillow, biting down to try and keep as quiet as he can, but he couldn’t control the sounds he’s making for all the money in the world when Eliot starts fucking right up against his prostate. He’s not going to last long like this, wishes his arms weren’t pinned under his chest so he could jerk himself off, but he knows he doesn’t necessarily _need_ that. He hasn’t come like that in _years_ , with nothing but the feeling of being stretched and a blunt pressure against his prostate. He can count on one hand the number of times it’s happened in his life, would honestly have thought he’s told old for it to be possible anymore. But here like this, —face down, ass up with Eliot’s big cock filling him _so good_ — he realizes abruptly that he’s going to come with or without friction on his dick, and soon. Can already feel it building low in his gut, in the tremble of his legs. All he can do now is brace for it.

Eliot gets lost in it again, can’t help himself. Loses himself in the tight heat of Quentin’s body, the desperate staccato whines he’s burying in the sheets, the sight of his rim stretched obscenely around Eliot’s cock, hungry for whatever he can give. He doesn’t realize the epiphany Quentin is having beneath him, doesn’t have any idea how close the man is. Just knows how good it feels to fuck him like this, to let go and just rail him mercilessly and revel in how much Quentin _loves_ it.

And then the sounds Quentin’s making change. His breathy, sobbing moans pitch lower and lower and Quentin’s bucking back against him like he can’t get enough. Eliot hears his name, repeated like a mantra, desperate and so fucking sexy muffled by the pillow. Quentin is shuddering, full body spasms. Eliot has to hold him down to keep from slipping out between how bad his legs are shaking and his hole squeezing down around Eliot so hard it almost hurts and he realizes Quentin is _coming_ , _fuck_. Eliot’s brain breaks when it hits him. Because _his_ hands are both on Quentin’s hips and Quentin’s hands are pinned to the mattress which means- fuck, _fuck._

He thrusts all the way in, to the hilt, feels Quentin twitch at it. Rakes his nails gently up the man’s back, watching him shudder before he yanks his body up to kneeling so his back is pressed to Eliot’s chest. Quentin’s head falls back like a ragdoll, resting on Eliot’s shoulder, panting and twitching as Eliot keeps fucking him like this. Eliot can see the mess he made of the duvet, runs a hand through the bit that landed on Quentin’s chest and stomach. His cock is still leaking, oversensitive and softening now.

“Do you,” he asks, trying to catch his breath, forehead tucked into Quentin’s collar, “have any fucking clue how hot that was, baby?” Quentin only whines in response and fuck, Eliot thinks, he must be so sensitive with Eliot still filling him up like this. He thinks about pulling out for a second, finishing himself off on Quentin’s ass or thighs or chest. He doesn’t though, he’s weak and selfish and _so so_ close. He kisses Quentin, more tongue than anything else, and keeps fucking him, bucking desperately until it overwhelms him and he shudders his own release.

He pulls out almost immediately, oversensitive almost to the point of pain, legs shaking too hard to keep them both up. Quentin all but collapses onto the bed, just enough wits about him to miss the wet spot.

Eliot’s throat is raw when he asks, “Are you good?” Quentin hums, nodding softly, looking at Eliot with a dazed look. If he hadn’t just come, the sight of it would do it for Eliot. Quentin lying there, freshly fucked, come not even dry on his stomach.

He commits the image to memory and presses onto the next priority, “Trash can?”

Quentin swallows, doesn’t sound any better than Eliot when he replies, “Under the nightstand. There’s um, there’s wet wipes in the drawer.”

Eliot stands on jelly for the two steps to the trashcan before he opens the nightstand, thankful he doesn’t have to put pants on and walk down the hall to the bathroom. He finds the wet wipes under the box of condoms (and next to a realistically modeled, pinky-flesh colored dildo, which he files away for later). He crawls shakily back into bed and, ever the pragmatist, wipes off the duvet first as much as he can before curling next to Q and haphazardly wiping them both down.

“Does that,” he says after a minute once they’re clean, heart still pounding, “Is that something that happens a lot. To you?” with as much sex as he’s had in his life, it’s something he’s only seen in porn.

“No,” Quentin huffs a laugh, “definitely not.”

He looks at Eliot, face open and cheeks still flushed, “It’s only -I’ve only ever done it a couple times. And never when I’m actually _trying_ to.”

Eliot hums in response, allowing it to stroke his ego a bit, running his fingers across Quentin’s sweaty chest. After a moment, he smiles, “I think you may want to look into more soundproofing,”

Quentin groans, embarrassed and buries his face in Eliot’s shoulder, “Oh my god, _stop_ ,”

“Or a ball gag.” Quentin punches his arm half-heartedly and Eliot cackles.


	2. If It's Not Love, Then It's the Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Margo stages an intervention, trivia happens, the boys talk about their feelings, the boys talk about their feelings, the boys talk about their feelings some more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been blown away by the response to this so far, you guys are the best! Thank you all so much.

“Hold up, bitch, we have some _shit_ to unpack,” Margo starts on him almost immediately when he picks her up from the airport in the middle of rush hour on Wednesday.

Eliot _knew_ he should have made her take an Uber.

“I leave you alone for _four days_ and you fuck this guy —from _trivia_ — meet his whole family, and decide you want to parent his kid?”

“I bond fast,” he deflects.

“ _Four days, Eliot_.” she repeats.

“How was Chicago?” he tries, though he knows it’s futile, they’re having this conversation now, apparently.

“Windy. Stop changing the subject.” Eliot curses his inability to keep anything from her, he should’ve just waited until they got engaged or broke up and then given her the CliffsNotes.

“Does he have a magic dick? Is that it?”

“I mean not to kiss and tell but…” Margo is unamused.

“So you actually have feelings for him? Eliot, honey, I love you, but this is _sudden_. You’re heading towards a U-Haul faster than a middle aged lesbian.”

“To be fair, we’ve been dating for almost two months, Margo,” his eyes are on the road. They’re stuck in traffic and haven’t moved in four minutes, but he’s a very safe driver.

“You don’t _date_ , Eliot. You fuck and you leave,” her tone softens, “I’m worried.”

“You didn’t date either. Before Josh,” he still doesn’t understand Josh and Margo, but she’s _happy_ with him, so he approves on that basis alone.

Margo ignores him, which means he’s right, “And since when do you go two months before banging someone? He’s not _that_ cute.”

What’s he supposed to say to that? _It didn’t feel like two months?_ _I was pretty sure he hadn’t been with anyone since his wife died and I wanted to wait until he was ready?_

“He is that cute.”

“Eliot,” he finally meets her eyes, they’re still not moving, “You haven’t been in a relationship since Mike died.”

He hates her a little for saying it, it’s a bitch move. He hates her more for being right.

He sighs, “You wanna talk about feelings, Bambi? Okay. I hate my life. I hate my job, I hate my apartment, I hate pretty much everything that comes between Wednesday nights because at 32 years old _pub trivia_ is the only thing I have to look forward to. I’m tired of going home alone every night and resisting the urge to drink myself to death for the sole reason that it would _disappoint my therapist_. Being alone and aloof is _much_ more cool and fun at 20.”

“You like your job,” there are tears in his eyes, but that makes him laugh because _of course_ that’s what she took from all that.

“I do like my job,” he gives her. He does, in a way. It’s everything he wanted, really. It’s easy and overpaid and utterly unimportant. He doesn’t have to think about it the second he clocks out, “But it’s not a life.”

They’re silent for a moment. He loves her for many reasons, but one of them is she always knows when he needs a dramatic pause.

“So I hate my life. And I meet him. _At trivia._ And he’s cute and he has a dumb name and he’s a nerd, which you _know_ is my one weakness. And I don’t know what I wanted, honestly. I’m not sure if I just wanted to fuck him or if I knew I _needed_ something, but he asked me to get coffee-”

“ _So_ basic,” she judges.

“I know, it’s endearing. But he asked me to get coffee and I _liked_ him. I liked him even though he has a load of baggage to rival mine. So I kept getting coffee with him and I don’t know, we _bonded_ over being, like, mutually damaged or whatever. It just kind of happened,” he makes a vague _I don’t know_ gesture, “And the kid is like, unfairly adorable.”

She stares him down a little longer, in that way where he feels like she’s looking straight into his soul, “Okay.”

“Okay? That’s it?”

“ _Okay_ , I’m satisfied this isn’t some kind of nervous breakdown. I never thought you had any _paternal_ instincts, so that’s throwing me for a loop, but you’ve always been one to go big or go home.”

“I do have a documented flair for the dramatic.” he admits.

“I’m meeting him at trivia tonight,” she decides.

* * *

“Margo wants what?” Quentin is looking at him like he’d suggested some light cannibalism. Eliot is honestly surprised he didn’t go for a spit take.

“She wants you on our team this week so she can like, make sure you’re not a gold digging axe murderer or something equally as tedious,” he sips his mojito, which is disappointing. He’d made much better ones at the height of his mixology career.

“I don’t think you understand how seriously my friends take trivia. There’s a rule book. It’s _codified_ , Eliot.” which is about the most precious thing he’s ever heard.

“So we’ll trade you out for one of us to keep it even. Josh is a botanist, so he gets all the science questions you all usually miss.”

Quentin looks confused, “I thought you said he was a drug dealer?”

“He’s a consultant for legitimate marijuana growers, he just sells… _excess_ to friends on the side, that’s not the point,” he takes a breath, “Margo is the closest thing I have to family and she wants to meet you. And she’s very scary to say no to.”

Quentin makes a face and Eliot can’t tell if he’s happy or anxious. Knowing Quentin, the answer is _both_ , “I’ll let my team know.”

The swap goes over easier than Quentin had expected. Penny even refers to it as _an improvement_ , but his eyes are supportive. He and Penny have come a long way since their disastrous stint as roommates.

Eliot had said Margo was scary to say no to, Quentin thinks a good correction to that would be just _Margo is scary_.

“So this is him,” her eyes rake over him judgmentally for an extended moment before she nods at him to sit next to her, “Margo. Head bitch and best friend.”

“Quentin,” he replies, taking the seat, “uh, English professor and boyfriend?”

She doesn’t quite smile at that, but her mouth quirks, eyes shifting to Eliot, “You were right, El, he _is_ cute.”

Eliot gives her a self-satisfied smirk in return, his hand absently patting Quentin’s thigh. He and Margo have what appears to be an entire conversation with their eyes. Quentin’s not entirely sure what’s going on, but he feels like he’s passed the first test.

* * *

“This verb is the last word in Robert Frost’s poem “ _Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening_ ”?” the Quizmaster announces.

Quentin almost rolls his eyes, it’s such a gimme, “Sleep,” he says before taking a sip of his drink —or well, trying— only to find it empty.

“You sure?” one of Eliot’s friends, Todd, asks. It’s different than when Penny questions his responses. Todd doesn’t _challenge_ so much as he verifies.

Quentin doesn’t want to make it weird with Eliot’s friends —he actually really likes them so far, even if Margo is terrifying— and he isn’t sure how to communicate, _I was a pretentious teenager with major depression, I had the poem memorized by 17_ without it being like, a _thing_ so he just says, “Uh, yeah, pretty certain,”

At the end of the round he and Eliot make their way to the bar. Ostensibly to grab everyone another round and clandestinely to give Quentin a break.

“How am I doing? Be honest.” He asks, nervous.

“Well Fen adores you, no surprise there, she’s an angel, and Todd is like categorically incapable of dislike, I think. You’d know already if Margo disapproved, but I think she’s holding out to make you squirm.” Eliot rests a hand under his head, cupping his jaw, “It’s going well, Q, please breathe before you pass out.”

He leans into Eliot’s touch, “Thank you.”

* * *

At the end of the night, someone makes the decision that their teams should mingle. _Josh_ , of all people, makes introductions. The ease with which Quentin’s friends have embraced Josh makes him suspect that a little shuffling across enemy lines might become a more common occurrence from now on. They’ll have to add to the rules.

As they’re all saying their goodbyes, Margo turns to Eliot as though Quentin isn’t there and says, “I hereby grant _tentative_ approval. But if you two fuckheads elope and I have to hear about it afterwards I’m cutting dicks.”

“ _Bambi_ , no need to get all sappy in public,” Eliot’s tone is aloof, but there’s a softness in his eyes.

He and Eliot linger on the sidewalk after everyone else has gone their separate ways, despite the fact that he knows he’s keeping the sitter waiting _again_ , there’s something nagging at him.

“What did Margo mean when she was talking about eloping?” His mind had, as always, started to pick the words apart. Eliot doesn’t seem like the type to lure strange men to Vegas for quickie weddings or something equally ridiculous, but the comment struck him as odd.

Eliot looks surprised by the question, “She thinks we’ve been moving a bit fast is all.”

Quentin falters for a moment, “Do you? Feel like we’re moving too fast?”

Eliot takes his hand before he’s even stopped speaking, kissing his knuckles, “It doesn’t feel like it. But she worries,” he pauses, trying his best to explain.

“Remember I told you about…” he takes a breath, “about Mike?”

“Your boyfriend in grad school?” _who died in a car accident_ goes unsaid. Eliot’s actually glad that he’s already told Quentin about Mike, about his family, about growing up on a _farm_ in _Indiana_. He’s not in the headspace right now to hash out his traumatic emotional backstory from scratch, even if they did have time.

“Yeah,” Eliot’s voice is sad, a little rough. It’s Quentin’s turn to stroke his thumb over Eliot’s palm soothingly, “He wasn’t just my grad school boyfriend. He was kind of… my only real relationship. Ever.”

Quentin, bless him, doesn’t respond. He seems to get that Eliot just needs a minute to collect himself.

“Aside from Mike, the longest I’ve been with someone exclusively is about a month, maybe a little longer if you’re flexible with the criteria. I tend to run away when feelings tend to start.” he’s never been ashamed of his track record, but right now hates admitting it for some reason. Knows that it will just feed into Quentin’s anxiety, but he deserves the truth.

“So when Margo realized that I wasn’t going to just… _come and go_ , so to speak, that I was calling you my boyfriend and meeting your dad and getting attached to your kid and _happy_ about it… it raised some alarms for her. To say the least. She’s tough, but she cares more deeply than she lets people realize,” he pauses for a second, “And she may murder me if she knows I’m telling you she’s capable of human emotion, so that stays between us.”

Quentin laughs, but they both fall silent for a minute, digesting. Eventually, Quentin says, “I… you know how big being with you was for me. _Is_ for me. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how big it is for you too.”

Eliot laughs at that, “You underestimate yourself, Q.”

He swallows, hadn’t really intended to tell Quentin this next part. He thinks it might be too much, but feels he owes it to him, “What I’ve told you… about me and where I’m from, and my family, and Mike. The people alive on this planet who know those things is limited to Margo and a select few mental health professionals,”

He meets Quentin’s gaze, which is equal parts touched and shocked, “You make me feel…” Eliot pauses, unsure of how to finish. Normal? He never wanted to be. Well-adjusted? Cared for? Comfortable, secure, _loved_ \- “- _safe_.”

Quentin holds him tighter, “You make me feel safe too.”

* * *

Their routine changes now that Eliot has met Teddy.

He and Quentin will still go for coffee, some weekends, but it’s usually to-go, Teddy in hand as they head to the Farmer’s Market (“Aw, the _height_ of queer domesticity, how sweet,” Margo says) or the park or, if the stars align and Teddy is in a particularly good mood, even a museum.

Eliot also finds himself spending more time at Quentin’s apartment on weeknights. They almost always leave together from trivia, whether they’re on the same team that week or not, and it’s basically autopilot at this point for him to head over after work.

It’s… nice.

He enjoys seeing Quentin in his natural habitat, grading papers on the sofa while Eliot cooks. And Eliot loves finally having someone else to cook _for_. Quentin enjoys his food rather dramatically, praising Eliot like he’s an iron chef even if _Teddy_ refuses to eat most of what he cooks (“Don’t take it personally, El, he only eats like three foods _on a good day_ , it’s a miracle you got him to even try it,”).

They settle into domesticity with shocking ease. One of his favorite parts of the day quickly becomes watching Quentin read Teddy to sleep. And that, frankly, would confuse the hell out of the person he was ten years ago. But 22-year-old Eliot didn’t get to hear Q do all the voices and see Teddy’s tiny little eyes fight to stay open long enough to hear the ending.

“You’re so good with him,” he kisses into Q’s hair one night after Teddy falls asleep.

The man hums in response, eyes still glued to the sleeping child, “Kids are easy.”

Eliot snorts, “I think most of the population would fight you on that, baby.”

Quentin turns in his arms, pressing his head against Eliot’s chest, “I’m not saying it’s not _work_ because it’s a lot of fucking work. It’s just…. Kids have simple needs. You love them, feed them, keep their lives mostly consistent. And they love you back, just like that. Even if you fuck up, they just forgive. It’s so easy for them, they don’t even question it.”

Eliot thinks about how easily and immediately Teddy had accepted him without any thought for whether he deserved it.

Maybe Quentin has a point there, “Until they get older and have pesky little minds of their own.”

Quentin laughs, pulling him out of Teddy’s room, “Spoilers. We’re not quite there yet.”

Eliot watches how his eyes crinkle, heart tripping like it always does when Quentin says _we_. Like he could be a parent. Like they could be a family.

Not for the first time recently, he fights back the urge to say it — _I love you, I love you, I love you_. That’s one thing he doesn’t want to rush. Instead, he ducks down to kiss Quentin, something to placate the urge. A show, to prevent a tell.

“Is it our turn to go to bed now?” he asks when they break apart, the waves of it — _I love you, I love you, I love you_ — still there, but a gentle lapping at his feet now, rather than a tsunami.

“That depends,” Quentin’s eyes darken. He’s so easy to work up and Eliot revels in it, “What do you have in mind?”

Eliot hums in faux consideration, furrowing his brow dramatically even as his hands make their way up under Quentin’s shirt to get at bare skin. He hopes he never stops feeling this gnawing need to touch, to be touched.

He leans down to kiss Quentin again, letting it get sloppy and eager and giving Quentin just a taste of what he wants, “I was actually wondering,” he says, breathing a little rough, “if you might want to fuck me?”

It’s something he’s wanted absently for a while now, an itch he kept meaning to ask Q to scratch. It’s just so easy to get distracted on the somewhat rare occasions they fell into bed with enough time and energy for penetrative sex. Especially when Quentin acts the way he does, when he’s so eager and responsive, it makes Eliot want to just rail him more often than not.

Quentin looks surprised at the request, like it hadn’t occurred to him. There’s no disappointment, no hesitation in his gaze though. Hands drift down to cup Eliot’s ass, “Yeah,” his voice is breathy, like he didn’t realize he wanted it until Eliot put the suggestion out there.

They barely make it to the bedroom and lock the door before they’re unwrapping each other, before Quentin is pushing him back on the sheets to blow him.

That was another reason they hadn’t gotten around to this yet. Quentin doesn’t believe in the distinction between foreplay-blowjobs and blowjob-blowjobs and _his mouth_ is so good that half the time they abandon any further plans entirely. Eliot watches him sink deeper and groans at the feeling of his tongue doing _that thing_ against his shaft that Quentin knows is unfairly good.

As out of practice as Q had been, Eliot was right: it was just like riding a bike. He still can’t take all of Eliot, —Quentin kind of doubts that’s actually possible, but he also isn’t going to ask just in case he’s wrong— but he can take him far enough back to swallow around the tip and he _absolutely_ abuses that ability.

Quentin is an eager cocksucker, the way he is with everything in bed, scrambling and obsessive, desperate to please. Like Eliot is going to take it away from him and he’s got to make as much of the time he has as possible.

Eliot is in _no way_ going to ever take his dick away from this man, but he enjoys the outcome nonetheless as Quentin sucks on just the tip of him, hand working up the shaft, tongue massaging the sensitive, spongy head. The sight of it alone is almost enough to make Eliot want to change their plans and come just like this. Let Q keep worshiping his cock, pull him off at the last second and coat his face, maybe.

He pulls his thoughts off that train as soon as they board, “Baby if you keep sucking me like that we are _not_ going to fuck tonight.”

Quentin pulls off almost regretfully, hand still jerking him, but lightly. Enough to keep him where he’s at, but not quite enough to get him anywhere else, “Sorry,”

Eliot huffs out a laugh and pulls him up to kiss, wet and deep, “Please do not ever apologize for blowing me, Q, fuck.”

They keep making out and Quentin has the beautiful idea to slot their cocks together, grinding onto Eliot until they’re too worked up and he has to break away and move for the night stand. He grabs the lube —absently thinking they’ll need more sooner rather than later— and then freezes.

“Um, Eliot, we have a problem,” he looks down the bed at the man in question, “we only have your condoms.”

Eliot feels like an idiot, fuck, he’s been so focused on getting Quentin’s dick in him, he had somehow forgotten that _condoms come in sizes._ Quentin isn’t small by any means, but Eliot’s penis has garnered reviews like _porn star_ and _monster cock_ more often than not in the past and the difference between them isn’t negligible.

He considers it for a moment. They could probably just chance it and work with what they have for tonight and just pick up other condoms later, but if it slips off —Eliot does not want to spend a Monday night in the ER explaining that there’s a condom stuck inside him. That is a facet of his youth he is _not_ keen to revisit.

“Fuck,” he says, “I didn’t even think about that.”

As much as he’d already wanted to get dicked down, it’s worse now. Like he wants it even more just because he can’t have it.

Quentin groans, unfortunately not because of anything they’re doing with their dicks, “No, fuck, it’s my fault if anything, I should have gotten some for me when I got some for you,”

“It’s okay,” Eliot runs a hand through Quentin’s hair, hanging down in his face, “It’s not exactly a hardship for me to fuck you. Or if you’d rather, we can get off just like this,” he pushes their dicks together.

Quentin bites his lip, his thinking face sexier than it has any right to be, and says, “What if we just… didn’t use one?”

He says it gingerly, like he’s expecting Eliot to shoot it down without consideration but he wants to shoot his shot anyway.

Eliot almost does shoot it down, a knee jerk response from years of casual —but very safe— sex. Before he can reject it outright, though he stops himself. If they don’t have this conversation now, they’ll have it eventually anyway. So he says something he’d never thought he’d hear himself say in any context, “We should talk about this.”

He shifts, sitting up so that Quentin is straddling his lap, which is never an unwelcome image but is kind of distracting at the moment, “When I was 19, I got chlamydia,” best to start bluntly.

“Oh,” Quentin responds, which pretty much says it.

“It wasn’t really a big deal, a round of antibiotics and a few angry phone calls and I moved on. Very lucky as far as the STI lottery goes. But I’ve been careful ever since,” _careful_ was a bit of an understatement. He’d practically bought stock in latex manufacturing. It was _years_ before he so much as sucked a dick without a condom.

“I get it,” Quentin interrupts, “I’m sorry, we don’t-”

Eliot shushes him with his lips, “Let me finish, Q,” Quentin shuts his pretty mouth and nods.

 “I’ve been careful ever since. I didn’t, like, stop having sex or anything so dramatic, obviously, but I got tested every three months, made condoms a dealbreaker, et cetera,” Quentin’s still looking into his eyes, not quite sure where he’s going with this.

“I’m telling you this so you know I’m very sure when I say I’m clean-” he hates that term, the implication that being _ill_ somehow makes you dirty, “-and so you know that I’m serious when I say that if you’re sure you are too, I-” he swallows.

“I still want you to fuck me tonight.”

“Oh,” Quentin says once more, different now. He swallows, “I haven’t been with anyone else since Arielle,” which confirms what Eliot had already been pretty sure about anyway, “but if you want me to get tested just in case-” Eliot cuts him off with a kiss.

“If you want to, by all means. But that’s good enough for me and I’m not about to let you sully a good woman’s name when she’s not here to defend herself.” Quentin laughs, which is weird because his naked boyfriend making a joke defending his dead wife’s honor really shouldn’t be funny, but it is.

“Okay,” Quentin smiles against his cheek, kissing lightly down his jaw.

“Okay,” Eliot replies.

Both of them had softened a little —talking about chlamydia and dead people will do that to you— so Quentin takes them in hand while they kiss, lazily working them up again.

“One thing though?” he says, kissing at Eliot’s neck just on the edge of too-light.

Eliot hums at the question, distracted, “What’s that?”

“Does that mean next time you fuck me, I get to feel you bare too?” Eliot shudders at the words and they almost convince him that maybe _that_ should be the plan for the night.

He doesn’t understand how he can want this man so much in every single way possible.

“Kind of a waste of perfectly good condoms,” he quips, “maybe we should work our way through the rest before I let you have that.”

Quentin doesn’t so much push him onto the mattress as use their body weight to lean Eliot back while he’s distracted by the tongue in his mouth, “ _Such_ a tease,”

They grind together for a while, it never fails to get Q all hot and bothered to see and feel their dicks sliding against each other like this. He grabs the lube where he’d let it fall beside them, “How do you wanna do this?” he kisses Eliot again, “Want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

Eliot laughs a little at that, “I’m hardly a blushing virgin, Q,”

Quentin rolls his eyes, flushing a little, “Question stands. I don’t- I haven’t done this a lot. The other way around. So tell me how you like it.” he runs his hands up Eliot’s chest.

Eliot feels bad for laughing, he should have realized. He decides to let Quentin take care of him, “Put a pillow under my hips and kiss me while we fuck.”

Quentin sits up, resting on his heels, shit-eating grin on his face, “ _Eliot Waugh_ , are you asking me to _make love_ _to you_?”

Eliot rolls his eyes at the teasing, “Not all of us just jizz ourselves any time someone bends us over, Coldwater. I just know what works for me.”

“Understood,” Quentin reaches for a pillow as instructed, “I’ll do my best to woo you with my dick.”

Eliot tries to kiss him just to get him to stop talking, to no avail, as soon as they part to shift the pillow under him, Quentin starts again, “Should I put on some John Mayer? Will that do it for you?”

Eliot groans at that, kind of can’t believe he’s in love with such an _ass,_ “Now you’re just insulting me.”

He seems to be out of jokes though, kissing down Eliot’s chest. He sucks at one nipple for a second, just enough to harden it, before making his way down between Eliot’s legs. He immediately forgives Quentin for the jokes when the man takes him into his mouth again.

Quentin sucks him slowly this time. It’s not quite a tease, just a languid enjoyment of the act, savoring the feeling of Eliot growing fully hard in his mouth. He hears the click of the lube opening and it twists something like anticipation in his gut.

A slick finger rubs gentle circles around his hole and Quentin sucks him deeper, as though Eliot needs a _distraction_ from being fingered. He groans lightly when it starts to press into him, bearing down. _Finally_ , what he’s wanted. He tangles a hand in Quentin’s hair, petting and not-quite-pulling. Guiding the pace of his mouth.

Quentin’s fingers are long and dexterous and it’s been _too long_ since Eliot had someone work him open like this, he’d forgotten just how much he can enjoy it, when the mood strikes. The stretch of knuckles against his rim, the feeling of being filled. Q’s fingers —two now— curl inside him and he groans, hips bucking into his mouth.

He glances down to make sure Quentin’s okay, but doesn’t apologize when he sees how blissed out the man looks, eyes glassy and lips stretched wide. Eliot holds his head still and fucks up, testing. He’s rewarded with a groan around his cock, which, fuck. He keeps at it, fucking Quentin’s mouth slowly while he feels a third finger work into him, stretching him purposefully.

“So good for me, Q, fuck,” his eyes are glued to the sight below him. He could die happy like this, his cock sliding into the mouth of a beautiful man and fingers twisting against his prostate. He speeds up his thrusts into Quentin’s mouth, who doesn’t seem to care that he’s almost choking if the way he’s humping the mattress is any indication, seemingly happy to let Eliot use his mouth and fingers and anything else.

Fuck, Eliot could definitely come like this if it goes on much longer, but he doesn’t have it in him to pull Quentin off his dick yet.

He gets close by the time Quentin holds his hips down and lets his cock go with one last suck to his head that sends shivers through his body. Q quickly developed a sixth sense for when Eliot’s right on the edge and he uses it utterly without mercy. He sits up between Eliot’s thighs, jerking himself lightly.

“Are you ready?” Quentin’s voice is wrecked, probably not in the least because of the way Eliot was just fucking his throat.

Eliot nods, having actually forgotten there was a point to this but loose and ready nonetheless, “Yeah, baby, please,”

Quentin looks like he might have an aneurysm at the _please_. Eliot resolves to exploit it for all it’s worth later. For now, he watches Quentin line himself up, feels the bare skin of him press at his hole, wet with lube, and can’t help the groan it pulls from him. He kind of can’t believe they’re doing this.

Quentin slides into him.

It’s good, it’s _really_ good. It’s exactly the scratch Eliot wanted for this itch. He thinks he can feel the difference, without the condom. Feel Quentin’s skin against his at least, but he’s not sure if he’s just imagining it. Above him, Quentin is beautiful. Fully inside him, waiting for Eliot to adjust.

Eliot flexes around him, just to see him buck. It works, Q swears under his breath and starts to fuck into him languidly, eyes darting between Eliot’s face and down to where he’s stretched around Quentin’s cock, like he can’t decide what he wants to look at more.

If Quentin wants to watch, he’ll put on a show. Eliot takes himself in hand and doesn’t bother to bite back a soft groan, “You feel so good, Q,”

It’s not an exaggeration, either. Quentin feels spectacular inside of him, better than he expected even. Suddenly, Quentin’s bending forward, kissing him hot and filthy, arms braced on either side of Eliot’s head and the angle is _fantastic_. He wraps his legs around Q’s waist, using him as leverage to grind back on his thrusts. He pulls his arm out from between them, leaves the friction of their stomachs stimulate his cock, and tangles his fingers in Q’s hair.

This is why Eliot loves being fucked like this, it’s so much of everything. Quentin feels amazing, inside him, above him, against him. They fuck smooth and desperate, until Eliot realizes he’s moaning little sounds into Quentin’s mouth with every stroke against his prostate because they haven’t stopped kissing, and Quentin’s thrusting into him deliberate and slow.

He really hadn’t been asking Quentin to make love to him before —he’s not nearly that sappy— and that’s definitely not how they started, but he thinks that might be what’s happening. Quentin breaks the kiss, panting and their eyes meet. _Fuck_ , Eliot thinks, that’s definitely what’s happening. There’s no escaping it. He feels exposed, suddenly, vulnerable. Like how he feels is written all across his face even though it’s _too soon_.

“Love being inside you, El.” Quentin whispers it into his ear, kisses down to suck at his neck and it sends a shudder through him.

 _Love._ it echoes around his head in Quentin’s voice. _Love, love, love._

It crashes against him. He sobs, half from the way his cock is pressed between them on every thrust and half from how raw he feels. Like Quentin has him stripped down, electric like a live wire and just as dangerous.

He doesn’t say anything. He’s afraid of what might come out if he does. He wants to kiss Quentin, wants his mouth occupied just in case because it’s all he can think right now, an unwelcome mantra, too soon to the party.

 _(I love you, I love you, I love you._ )

But when he pulls Quentin towards him, he dodges Eliot, teasing. Touching their noses together and then darting back every time Eliot tries to connect their mouths.

He can’t take it, Quentin’s little smile, pupils blown as Eliot stares into his eyes, drowning in _I love you, I love you, I love you._

“Please, Q,” he doesn’t consciously remember it from earlier, but he’s immediately reminded when Quentin shudders a breath and kisses him, finally. He thought it would help, having his mouth busy, but it doesn’t. If anything it’s worse because he’s cupping Quentin’s face, pulling him even closer, legs tightening around him like if he can press the two of them together hard enough, deep enough, they’ll meld together into one.

He only realizes how close he is when it’s too late, past the point of no return. The dual torture of Quentin inside him and up against his cock has him right on the edge, “I’m gonna come,” he chokes out, _needs_ Quentin to know for some reason.

Quentin groans like it’s the hottest thing he’s ever heard, fucking him harder, working his tongue into Eliot’s mouth, arching their bodies far enough apart so he can pump Eliot’s aching cock between them.

He comes like a freight train, legs squeezing around Q so tight it has to hurt. It feels like it lasts for hours, wave after wave crashing around him as he spills between their bodies. He’s so wrapped up in it he almost misses Quentin’s orgasm. The way he shakes between Eliot’s legs, the desperate stutter of his hips, the wet warmth spreading inside Eliot, the way he has to muffle his moan against Eliot’s shoulder.

Eliot should let him go. Should unwrap his legs from around Quentin’s body and let him pull out. Quentin is shaking with the effort of holding himself up, but Eliot wants him to rest against his chest. Wants to feel the weight of him pressing him into the mattress so they can be closer, oxygen be damned.

 _I love you, I love you, I love you._ It’s gentle against him this time, like the tide is just starting to come in.

He doesn’t let him go. He just pulls Quentin into another kiss, tightens his weak legs as much as he can.

“I-” Quentin tries, but Eliot kisses him again. Quentin indulges him this time, arms shaking, before gently letting his weight settle onto Eliot’s chest. He should feel suffocated, but _god_ he just wants Quentin closer. He doesn’t remember ever being this needy after sex, but he feels like something in him might break if Quentin pulls away right now.

Quentin doesn’t pull away, lets Eliot cling to him. He breaks the kiss though, presses their foreheads together instead and they just breathe into one another.

 _I love you, I love you,_ “I love you.”

It takes Eliot a moment to realize it wasn’t him who spoke.

Quentin is above him, head just far enough back to look him in the eye. He swallows thickly, shocked to his core.

“I know it’s too fast, fuck, I’m sorry,” Quentin rests his forehead on Eliot’s again, “I wasn’t going to say anything but I couldn’t. Fuck. I couldn’t fucking _make love to you_ like that and not. You don’t have to-”

Eliot kisses him, feels like he might cry. Like the ocean is swallowing him whole, “I love you too.”

“What?” Quentin is so stupid. For such a smart man, he’s an absolute dumbass.

“It’s too soon,” he says, hand shakily running up Quentin’s neck to cup his jaw and confesses, “I was trying so god damn hard not to say it because it’s too soon and we’re both broken and I don’t want to break you more and telling you that I love you in the middle of sex is like the _lamest cliché_ that I would never live down-” he laughs, a little desperate, thumb stroking Quentin’s cheek, “-but I do. I love you. Kind of a scary amount, actually.”

Quentin looks like he’s going to cry, like he feels as raw as Eliot right now, “Are you okay, Q?”

Quentin nods, jerky and sudden like he doesn’t remember how, his eyes so soft and full, “I just can’t believe you love me back.”

It sounds so small and it makes Eliot break. Someone good and true loves him. Told him that expecting nothing from him. And despite how strong and beautiful and _brave_ Quentin is, he still thinks he doesn’t deserve to be loved in return.

He feels so unworthy.

Eliot pulls him down, kisses him, trying to pour everything into it, trying to make Quentin see how loved he is. His hands scramble for every inch of skin they can reach, like if he touches enough he can press the emotion into the flesh, cover Quentin in it. He opens his mouth, inviting Quentin in, trying to tell him with lips and teeth and tongue if he won’t listen to words.

He tenses without meaning to, squeezing around where Quentin is still inside him, not yet soft but sensitive and raw all the same. The hand in his hair tightens, almost rough. Their mouths part but he can’t find words with Quentin staring into his soul like that. He feels Quentin hardening again, gasps into the space between their mouths.

He pushes himself up, pushes their mouths back together, one arm holding him up and the other still cupping Q’s face. Legs tighten, pull him closer, deeper. Quentin gasps, pulls his hips back and then forward again, and it’s so raw and real he can barely stand it. He can feel himself getting hard again as Quentin fucks him, different than before. It’s not gentle or soft. Eliot’s so sensitive it almost hurts when Quentin brushes his prostate, he sobs, needs more.

He uses his bodyweight, his larger frame, to roll them over. Leans over Q, pressing their foreheads together, and rides him so hard it hurts. Quentin touches his cock, just barely and Eliot chokes on a breath. It’s too good, too much. Quentin’s other hand is on his ass, fingers grasping filthy at the flesh, coming down to trace where they’re joined, making them both shudder.

Eliot kisses him again, again, for the thousandth time and prays for a thousand more and a thousand more. Kisses his lips and his cheek, temple to forehead. Kisses so soft and gentle and unlike the brutal pace that’s burning through his thighs,

“I love you,” he pants against his hair.

“I love you,” he kisses by his ear.

“I love you,” he breathes into his mouth.

“I love you,” he hears in return, finally.

Quentin comes inside of him, again, hand still working Eliot’s cock. Wet and sore and still full, Eliot comes again with Quentin’s name on his tongue.

“I wasn’t being literal,” Quentin says, breathless as soon as he can talk again, “When I said I didn’t believe you, I didn’t actually need you to convince me.”

“I know,” Eliot very carefully dismounts, sore and oversensitive, sprawling next to Quentin despite the frankly gross state they’re in, “but I’ve been told I have a flair for the dramatic.”

Quentin smiles into his hair, “I’ve hardly noticed,”

Eliot kisses him, “We certainly don’t do things by halves do we?”

Quentin hums in agreement, “Margo’s gonna have a field day.” 


End file.
